


Albedo

by ToyTowns



Category: Sonic the Hedgehog - All Media Types
Genre: Action/Adventure, Additional Warnings In Author's Note, F/M, Gen, Horror, M/M, Other, Romance
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2021-03-13
Updated: 2021-03-20
Packaged: 2021-03-20 18:49:09
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 18
Words: 60,344
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/30009360
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ToyTowns/pseuds/ToyTowns
Summary: Alchemy but I took the sting out of the stab making it more accessible to a wider audience.Doctor Eggman's chance journey into the Dust Hill desert releases an extraordinary being from a crystalline prison. Bonded to the being as her guardian by ancient covenant, the two have to learn to get along as they work to destroy a Stygian threat to life itself without killing each other in the process.
Comments: 4
Kudos: 5





	1. Long Way Home

Doctor Eggman wandered through the mysterious cave he discovered by the rocky Dust Hill with his 'trusty' robots, Orbot and Cubot by his side. Each held a bright flashlight that cut through the pitch black like a sword, carving out brief glimpses of the surroundings.

The robots were color-coded, red for Orbot and yellow for Cubot. Like their names suggested, they could be compacted into a sphere and a cube which made it easier for Eggman to use his lackeys in emergent but tight situations. The robots were short and thin, moving by hovering inches off the ground. They did not have legs but had skinny arms with rubbery hands.

The mouth of the cave was a gaping hole in the ground with an unnaturally smooth ramp that descended forward like the entrance to an underground parking lot. At first the trio was hesitant to go forward, worried they'd be run over by some kind of vehicle until they realized the cave itself was too narrow for even their hovercraft. Against their better judgment, they continued on foot without bringing supplies.

A peculiar wailing noise met Eggman's ears from far off ahead. It was a little sour and off-key, like someone trying to sing with a sore, phlegmy throat.

“Do you hear that?” He asked his robots.

“Hm... no. We’re not picking up anything.” Orbot said, looking around. "This place sure is creepy..."

"I don't understand! How are you two not hearing this sound?" Eggman questioned his robot lackeys. "It's so loud it’s giving me a headache."

He rolled up the sleeves of his red and gold jacket before unzipping it.

He thought that perhaps it _might_ have also been a bad idea to wear tight black pants in a desert. In his defense, he never expected to leave the luxury of his air conditioned vehicle and assumed that because it was winter in his native island home it would be just as bearable in the same hemisphere. As it turns out winter in the arid desert typically means occasional rain if you're lucky.

"I promise you we aren't hearing anything." Orbot piped up.

"Maybe it's at a frequency _you_ can't hear. However I designed you so that you should be able to hear things that even _I_ can't." Eggman paused to catch his shaky breath while Orbot and Cubot waited. He was an older, fat man who _really_ needed to take better care of himself. It felt like they were traveling for miles and he was growing tired of the feeling of having a rock in his throat.

“Had I known this was going to be such a difficult traipse I would have brought something motorized.” He complained to himself.

“Don’t die on us, boss.” Cubot chirped. "We can't carry your corpse out of here by ourselves!"

The cave itself was only a few dozen meters deep underground but the air was thick and humid- completely different from the surface.

There was no evidence of any living creatures ever being in the cavern path. There was _no_ sign of any activity at all. No litter, no graffiti or even gum wrappers accidentally blown in by wind. Not even sand had leaked into the cave from the surface and certainly no fresh air did, either.

With a heavy sigh he continued on.

It was a winding, slight decline and he knew getting back up was going to be the worst of it. While it was about as wide as the average two-lane city street, the ceiling was low and Eggman had to bend forward at some points so he wouldn't scrape his bald head.

The walls and ceiling were rough but the floor appeared to be carved smooth with surgical precision. The beading precipitation made the ramp no different from a slide after the rain. Nothing marred the spotless floor.

Out of the blue, for no reason at all other than on a whim, did Eggman decide to come out to this distant location as opposed to searching more locally. He hoped to scout out an area that would provide adequate space for solar energy farming and possibly a place to safely store hazardous materials far from the reach of prying government eyes.

What was supposed to be a quiet Sunday became an adventure when his various sensors picked up an unknown energy signature below them only moments after arrival in the southeastern section of Iran’s Dasht-e Lut desert. His computers couldn't identify what the source was but Eggman guessed that it _wasn't_ a Chaos Emerald.

"The moisture doesn't even make sense down here. There are no bodies of water according to the sensors. Where can it be coming from?" He spoke rhetorically.

“Maybe it’s all your sweat, boss.” Orbot hummed.

Eggman lifted his hand as if to strike his rude robot across the face.

"What if it's not actually a _sound?_ " Cubot asked excitedly.

"Huh?" Eggman raised an eyebrow and lowered his hand.

"Yeah! Like, what if it's actually a psychic attack or something?" Cubot sounded excited at his idea but Orbot did not share this enthusiasm and simply shook his head.

"Listen, Cubot- the day you are right about anything is the day I wear my footie pajamas in public. This wailing is giving me a headache. Maybe we should come back with more equipment. Maybe some kind of drill. Henchmen that don't suck..."

At this point the wailing quieted down to a more bearable tone and almost started taking on a discernible voice. It sounded like whispers punctuated with cries and Eggman could almost make out the words.

"You seriously do not hear that? It sounds like a _female_ voice-" He straightened up and cupped his hand around his ear.

Orbot and Cubot simply shook their heads and looked at each other. Maybe their boss finally cracked?

  
  


_Help_

_I'm_

_Sh... release…_

_please..._

_Open it_

_trapped_

_Save_

_Moon.. and.._

"Okay, _now_ I'm starting to pick something up. It's coming up like interference. Like crackling, but I still don't hear any voices." Orbot looked around with the beam of the flashlight nearly blinding Doctor Eggman when it swung to his face.

"I hear it, too!" Cubot straightened up with a start and pointed down the hall. "It's coming from that direction!"

"The path only _goes_ in that one direction!" Orbot scolded his square friend.

"Move it!" Eggman shouted, shoving the two robots aside and charging ahead. A green light faintly glowed like a dying candle down the path. "I see a light, do you see the light?" Eggman asked his two lackeys who lagged behind him.

  
  


_Don't..._

_help me... help_

_open …_

… _..reliquary .. witch_

_H-help…_

  
  


He broke into a sprint. The floor seemed to give way when Doctor Eggman slipped and tumbled forward for what felt like forever. He tried to grip the wall to stop himself from falling and sliced his gloved palm open on a sharp stone. The searing pain did nothing to dull the sensation of blood pouring from the wound. When he came to a stop he found himself lying on his back in a room that was wide open and brightly lit by what looked like a large glassy object embedded halfway into the wall on the far end. The ceiling was high and looked like it was carved in the same manner as the path floor. He sat up and looked at his palm and winced.

Eggman balled his hand into a fist to stop the bleeding and stood up with a pained groan. He was dizzy and nauseous after his tumble. His head throbbed with the intensity of a migraine and he wondered if he had a concussion.

"Orbot! Cubot!" He called out but received no reply. He looked around the room and realized there was no door. He looked up but also saw no opening from which he could've fell. He was trapped.

 _How do you get out of a room with no exits? The same way you got in!_ The old schoolhouse riddle came to mind. But how the hell _did_ he get in?

He turned to his communicator gauntlet and saw the screen was shattered and useless.

"Damn it." His heart pounded with anxiety. "I'm going to die of starvation before my idiot robots find me." He fruitlessly pounded on the screen with his fingertips hoping to turn it back on.

_Help…_

The voice spoke again. Doctor Eggman stared at the glowing object at the other end of the room. He could vaguely make out the shape of a human in it.

He tentatively walked forward as if beckoned by some invisible hand. The shape came into focus: it was a woman.

Now he was only a few feet away from a giant crystal. The woman suspended within was a tall, brown-skinned adult in her early thirties. Her hair was long and snow white, reaching her knees in length. Her sharp cheeks were softened by gray freckles. Her eyes were closed and her face was in a resting expression as if she was deeply asleep.

Her skinny arms limply hung at her side, leather-bound tome clutched in hand. He could see she was unshaven on her underarms and legs; she was clearly from a time before such hygienic conventions.

Her clothes were sparse and ratty: a simple brown leather cloth across her chest and a ripped, stained fabric skirt that was tied in a crude knot at her hip. She was barefoot and wore a bronze circlet on her head and a round opal-like cabochon embedded at the top of her sternum.

_I won't hurt you…_

"Are you speaking to me?" He could feel his heart pound.

_Yes…_

He noted that the figure was not breathing.

"Did you trap me here?" He asked accusingly.

_You are trapped?_

"Yes, I don't see a way out."

_I'm sorry…_

"Who are you? _What_ are you?"

_Touch the reliquary…_

"What is a reliquary?" His eyes narrowed.

_I am in the reliquary. I am not the reliquary._

Eggman paused again. He didn't want to release some kind of world-ending thing for a second time _without_ a plan to control it.

 _Touch the reliquary..._ The voice repeated with a slight firmness.

The figure's eyes opened slowly revealing wide violet irises devoid of pupils.

The woman moved very little and seemed to still be half-asleep in her movements. She looked at Eggman with sleepy curiosity and lifted her hand to the inside of the crystal, pressing it against the surface.

He didn't move.

 _Please touch the reliquary…_ The voice spoke from still lips.

"What _is_ this?" He felt the urge to break the walls of the object holding her in but resisted it.

Her eyes drifted to her hand and then back to his as if to direct him to press the crystal.

He hesitantly lifted his unhurt hand and pressed it to the crystal wall, lining it up with hers. The reliquary’s walls vanished in an instant, melting away like cotton candy in water.

The strange woman stepped forward unsteadily and looked over Eggman. She barely reached past his shoulders in height. Light continued to pour from behind her but changed to a white glow.

_You've freed me. Thank you._

Her mouth still did not move. Eggman stepped back, unsure of what to think other than cursing himself because Cubot was right. He felt something tighten in his chest and understood it as something tightening _between_ them.

"Sure.” He said curtly. “How do we get out of here?" He looked around nervously. "And where are Orbot and Cubot?"

_Orbot? Cubot?_

"My two robots I came here with." The light began to fade and Eggman's panic only grew when he saw that her eyes glowed. This is _not_ a human.

_What is a robot?_

"Never mind. Just get me out of here, please."

_I have little energy, but I will try. Where do you want to go?_

She stepped forward and offered her hand for him to take. He hesitated.

The light was dim now and her glowing eyes made her face look sharp and menacing.

"Take me to the surface." He said just as the light died and the only light came from those vacant purple orbs. “Please.” He grabbed her hand with his injured one and squeezed it.

It felt like he was in a vacuum. All the air was sucked out of his lungs in an instant and the world swirled around him.

And then he found he was outside the mouth of the cave with Orbot and Cubot waiting for him. The two humans were still holding hands. He inhaled the fresh air deeply and didn't mind that it was hot and burned his throat. She seemed to be unaffected by the glaring sunlight and the white-hot ground she was standing on barefoot.

"Boss! You're okay!" Cubot bounced with joy. “And you made a friend!”

"Who _is_ this?" Orbot gestured to the new person standing beside Eggman.

"I… I don't know." The doctor looked at her. “What is your name?”

"What happened to your hand?!" Orbot cried when he saw the blood still dripping from the gash.

The woman looked to Eggman's hand which was still clasped in hers and lifted it.

"Ah! Don't..." Eggman tried to pull his hand away but she grabbed his wrist hard and pulled him forward, nearly tripping him.

She let go of her book which floated in place, wrapped a length of her hair around his wound and squeezed it. Eggman felt a cool sensation and then nothing. The injury was healed.

She let him go and he pulled his hand back. He took several steps away from her and flexed his hand. He was fully healed; even the strain in his body from falling and the craning of his neck was gone.

She took hold of that old book again and looked off into the distance.

"Thank you? How did you do that? _What_ are you?"

"Boss, that strange energy we were tracking is gone now." Orbot piped up, seeming to not see the magic trick that was just performed.

"I think it was her; or rather the _thing_ she was in." Eggman pulled off his ruined glove and wiped his blood-caked hand on his jacket.

That was when a rumble in the distance startled all four of them.

"Time's up!" Eggman said. He ran to his Egg Carrier with Orbot and Cubot following suit.

It was one of GUN's large all-terrain vehicles. They picked up the energy reading and made quick work to travel there to investigate it.

The woman stood and watched them.

"Lady, _come on_." He motioned for her to get in, immediately regretting his invitation. She obliged.

The doctor made a beeline for his island lair hoping that GUN did not see him leave. After about half an hour of oppressive silence someone took the initiative to speak.

"What happened back there?" Cubot asked, "You sort of just vanished and we hit a wall."

"The path started closing and pushed us to the front right after you slipped." Orbot, who was sitting behind Eggman, looked the woman over, "It was like being squeezed out of a tube."

The yet unnamed woman was sitting next to Eggman with her book in her lap.

"Who _is_ the pretty lady?" Cubot sat behind her.

"Stop asking me questions you know I don’t have the answers to!" Eggman said.

She leaned back and shut her eyes.

Within hours they were at Eggman's gigantic metal lair that sat atop a semi-dormant volcano and overlooked the ocean. He couldn't wake the woman so he had to carry her in.

He laid her gently on his large gray sofa, instructed a nearby Crabmeat robot to chaperon her and ran to his bedroom on the other side of the building.

"Orbot, Cubot, we cannot tell anyone about this." He quickly threw on a clean, identical outfit.

"Are you gonna keep her? Ooh, let's name her something like Snowy! Or Blanca?" Cubot was pacing Eggman's sparse bedroom.

"She's not an _animal_ , you idiotic bucket of bolts. I’m sure she has her own name."

"If she’s not a human or an animal then what is she?" Orbot rolled up to where Eggman was.

“Dangerous." He sat on the edge of his bed and looked at his healed hand again. "I thought we were done dealing with mages and witches and all that magical nonsense."

“Maybe consider sticking her in a cage before she wakes up.” Cubot suggested.

"Now that I think about it... a human doesn't sound like a good pet." Orbot picked up the laundry and moved it to the hamper where it belonged. “Let’s get a budgie!”

“No birds!” Cubot cried. “They poop _everywhere!_ ”

“Shut up, you two! Hmm.” Eggman pondered the thought. “No. I have a feeling she will be somewhat compliant when she wakes. It’s clear she’s not from our time.” Eggman put on a spare gauntlet. “Let’s not alarm her with guns akimbo.”


	2. Safe And Sound

An hour passed before the woman woke up. She opened her tired, aching eyes and sat up to study the surroundings. The room was large and brightly lit with metal floors, walls and ceilings in silver and white with red glass inlaid. She shut her eyes tightly and held her book to her chest, feeling a lump form in her throat.

She wondered if she had finally died and gone to some kind of purgatory. She ran her hands over the plush sofa she was sitting on and admired the unnaturally consistent color and stitching of the fabric. _Such decadence!_

She tentatively lowered her bare feet to the floor and winced at how cold it was. She fully opened her now light-adjusted eyes and saw a pair of boots. She followed the legs upward with her gaze and was met with a broadly smiling man.

“You’re finally awake!” Eggman said a little too cheerfully.

She squeaked with fright and dove behind the sizable cushions with only bits of her hair poking out.

“Miss?” Eggman cocked an eyebrow. “I’m not going to hurt you.” He tried to coax her out using his softest, most calm voice possible. “I’m sorry I startled you. I forget how loud I am because I’m used to having to yell across empty halls.”

He could hear her breathing heavily behind the cushion. She peeked out over the top, eyes wide.

“ _Sen_...” She shook her hair out of her eyes. She adjusted her circlet.

“You’re safe here.”

She ran her hand through her hair and saw the spot where Eggman's blood was. She furrowed her eyebrows trying to remember what had happened.

The woman felt incredibly insecure surrounded by so much metal on all sides but felt his body language said he wasn't a danger to her. The woman stepped out from behind the cushion and stood up straight, regaining composure.

“Thank you,” she twisted her sarong back into place. At first the words that came out of her mouth sounded guttural and foreign but quickly made sense to Eggman moments later. “Thank you for releasing me.”

Eggman took a step back out of politeness.

"I apologize for inconveniencing you." She bowed slightly and held the book in her hand over her heart.

"What is your name?"

"My name is Sheptilah, queen of the Nannae people." Her cheeks flushed with embarrassment over being startled.

Now _this_ was interesting. Eggman had rescued a queen! A young and inexperienced one to boot. He could use this to his advantage.

He bowed in return with false modesty.

"Your majesty, my name is Doctor Ivo Eggman and I am pleased to meet you." He smiled, trying to appear harmless to her.

"I'm grateful for your rescue of me and I am honor bound to offer you my services in return. Within reason, of course."

"Services?”

"You haven't heard of the Nannae?" She squinted at him. She decided to hold back as much information as possible out of caution.

"No, unfortunately I have not." He really hadn't.

"Well, as you know, I can do magic.”

"Boss! You’ve got a call-" Cubot came into the room. His face changed to an expression of joy when he saw the strange lady was awake and waved at her.

"Your strange metal golems… I can't understand them." Sheptilah raised an eyebrow at the little yellow man, "What kind of souls did you use to make them?"

"Souls? These are robots."

Sheptilah shook her head.

Cubot was looking back and forth between the two and was unable to understand Sheptilah's language but saw that Eggman was able to respond in his own language.

"Madame, may I ask how old you are?" The doctor asked her sweetly.

"All of my teeth are in, so adequately old enough." Clearly the Nannae and their methods of telling age were… prehistoric.

"Would you say you are in your thirties?"

"My thirty _whats?_ Most people like me have thirty-two teeth if that's what you mean."

"No... thirty years." He was growing frustrated.

"May we step outside?" She offered as a compromise. "I may be able to explain more not inside your bizarre dwelling. The metal is hindering me."

"It's night right now." Eggman offered his arm to her.

"Perfect. Bring your tiny metal golem." She did not take his arm but instead walked next to him.

Eggman and his two robot lackeys immediately took her outside. It was dark and chilly but this did not seem to bother Sheptilah. The sea was calm; waves breaking on volcanic rock were the only sound piercing the silence of night. She inhaled the salty air quite deeply and breathed out slowly as if to calm herself.

She scanned the heavens for familiar constellations and saw that a few had shifted positions but retained their overall shapes. Sheptilah opened the book she was holding and turned to a page that looked like a hand-drawn star chart and compared it to the sky.

She sprinted away from the lair which was blocking her view of the full moon and breathed a sigh of relief to see that it appeared unchanged. She was on the same planet, just in another time and place.

"Why were you in a crystal?" Doctor Eggman finally asked.

"I was put there by my people." She flipped through the pages to another chart.

"And what was the reason?" Eggman tapped his foot impatiently.

"They wanted to keep me safe and alive for the future." She shut one eye and turned the book sideways. “To protect the planet.”

"What do you call this planet?" She changed the subject abruptly. The sound of her bare feet slapping the volcanic rock as she jogged back to him was almost amusing.

"Mobius." He nodded.

"We called it _Zanu_. The stars have shifted. How long was I hibernating?" She sounded nervously excited.

"If the stars have shifted positions for you… it was probably a _very_ long time." Eggman frowned when he did the math in his head. He was going to have to teach her so much about modern times that it would be _frustrating_ for the both of them.

"Hey," Orbot began, "how are you understanding her language? We can't."

"What did the red golem say?" Sheptilah shook her head.

"Why can I understand you and you understand me, but not my robots?" Eggman crossed his arms.

"Oh! My Oracle Stone." She rested her free hand on the opalescent gem embedded in her sternum. It glittered in a faint rainbow of colors even in the dark.

"It is interpreting meanings for us, but it doesn't affect your golems because they have no living qualities in them. With this stone I can do many things as it's the source of my magic, but it has its limits. I will have to learn your language manually."

"It's quite beautiful." Ivo complimented her. He wanted the power in that gem. His eyes lingered on it a little too long. "How does it stay on? Glue? Honey?"

"Please don't _stare_ at it," she turned away from him, "it's part of my body. It’s something we’re born with."

"Oh! My apologies for staring." He cleared his throat, realizing he had been very close to her breasts. "Orbot, Cubot… do a search for the Nannae people. Let's see if we can find her majesty's kingdom to return her to her people."

"Right away, boss!" Cubot grabbed Orbot's arm and dragged him inside.

"It's not like I wanted to watch my favorite soaps or anything…" Orbot said dejectedly.

She knew she likely didn't have any living descendants but opted to let him do a search to see what he could find.

"Tell me more about yourself." She asked him with somewhat feigned interest. She wanted to get a feel for him and this new place.

This was Ivo's best subject: himself!

"I am a beloved inventor! I am a genius and far smarter than anyone else on this island and I create the most magnificent of things. I can play several musical instruments and build the tallest towers." He beamed, "I am also quite wealthy."

“You don’t _look_ like a medicine man.”

“Not _that_ kind of doctor. I have a fancy piece of paper from many schools called a _doctorate_ that makes me a very educated expert on robotics.”

"So what _is_ a robot?" She asked with a smirk.

"A robot is a machine made of metal and electricity. I have made thousands of different kinds."

"Your people have captured _lightning?_ "

"A long time ago." He could tell she was easily impressed when explanations were given a magical twist.

"That's marvelous! What else have you done?"

"Hm…" He looked around for an example. "Well, we _have_ been to the moon."

"What!? The moon? You've been to the _moon?_ " Her eyes were huge with a mixture of excitement and horror, her smile tight and slanted.

"It's not that impressive. There's nothing up there." He lied.

"Did anything get... found up there?" She chewed on a thumbnail.

"Found? No. Just lots of dust and a great view of the planet."

Sheptilah let out a laugh to shake off the tension she felt in her chest.  _ Thank goodness _ , she thought.  _ I must have been woken up for  _ another  _ reason.  _

"We worshiped the moon. It's where we get energy for our Oracle Stones. It was always our dream to go to the moon and you've done it. I can't wait to explore this world and see what it has to offer."

"Wait, you can't leave yet." He needed to keep her in one place if he was going to use her powers for his own gain.

"I certainly can't stay with  _ you _ ." She didn't necessarily want to.

"Why not? I have more than enough space."

"But your tower is made of  _ metal _ . Iron inhibits my powers… did I forget to explain that? That and… I actually need to charge. Being in a crystal for a long time really weakens you."

"Your majesty, you are welcome to stay in my lai- I mean,  _ home _ , for as long as you need. I can even show you around when it is daytime. It's the least I can do since you healed me."

She hesitated for a moment and looked out to the sea. The waves rolling in the distance looked so free and careless and she wanted to melt away into them. She finally looked back at Ivo and nodded.

Eggman was happy to be back inside where it was warmer. He offered to have his robots make her dinner but she politely declined, stating that she was not hungry. He instead spent the rest of the evening teaching her things like what computers were and how to use indoor plumbing.

“It comes out hot  _ or  _ cold instead of just cold! This is such a marvel!” She ran her hands under the water. “You don’t have to heat it with fire or magic.”

“Not  _ directly _ , no. It comes from a boiler which keeps the water hot at all times. Sometimes it uses a small, controlled flame or it uses electricity to heat the water at a specific temperature.”

Ivo sincerely enjoyed having someone around to talk to; especially someone who was so enthusiastic about what he was teaching her. Sheptilah was just happy to not be talking about herself and instead focused on surviving this alien future.

She quickly figured out that stroking Ivo's ego was the best way to keep him from asking questions she was not prepared to answer.

“You’re so smart. How do you know all of this?” She leaned against the sink.

“This is basic knowledge for this century; but don’t worry. I’ll teach you everything you need to know. I’m going to be the smartest person you’ll ever meet. My IQ is three-hundred.”

“I don’t know what an IQ is.” She smirked.

“It means I am very, very smart.” He grinned broadly. “I built everything around you with my own two hands! Except for the furniture. Most of that was bought from a store.”

When she felt she learned enough she used her magic to quietly put Eggman to sleep by lightly pressing her thumb to his forehead. The magic that flowed from her body felt cold and tingly but did not harm him.

As he slumped down over his desk she removed her circlet and placed it in his hands as a sign that she would be back. Sheptilah greatly disliked abusing her powers like this but really wanted out of the iron box.

She left the lair with no trouble as Ivo lived alone and his robot lackeys were charging for the night, unable to stop her. Once the doors to the lair hissed shut behind her, however, she realized her mistake.

There was no way for her to get down from the volcanic outcrop without using magic and even then she'd have to swim through a half-mile of freezing water to get to the shore. She concentrated hard and attempted to teleport to the beach but ended up waist-deep in frigid, churning water.

Before her brain could register where she was, a tall wave pushed her forward, sent her spiraling under cold water and then onto shore.

She stood, choking and sputtering on saltwater before regaining some composure. She was soaked to the bone but still had her tome clutched in hand. She walked from the beach to a nearby patch of grass and unsuccessfully tried to wring her hair out. She had so much hair that it was practically impossible to move without feeling weighed down by it when it was wet.

Sheptilah used magic to dry off by concentrating and sending the water droplets in all directions leaving behind a fine layer of salt on her skin and hair. She moved to a nearby palm tree and sat against it with her knees drawn up to her chest, her salt-flaked hair pooling around her body like a protective veil.

After a long silence she let out a choked sob and began to cry, mourning for her lost family. The fight would soon start again and she prayed that she would be able to finish it.

A sudden rustling from behind frightened the woman. Sheptilah took a shaky breath and swallowed hard.


	3. Lost City

A heavily armored GUN vehicle popped in through a large warp ring, barely missing a boulder. Rouge the Bat sat strapped into the back of the vehicle with Shadow the Hedgehog sitting across from her. Both were in barely-disguised booster seats due to their diminutive height. The white man in full military garb driving the vehicle cursed out loud as he cut the wheel hard and jostled them.  
  
  
"Watch it!" The Mobian woman shouted.  
  
"Sorry," the man answered back, "we can't exactly tell what's what in terrain like this!" The rocky, sandy ground made for a very bumpy ride.  
  
Rouge crossed her legs and shook her foot anxiously, trying to ignore the nausea building in her stomach. They had left the other member of the group, a robot that broke free from Eggman's control, back at the base for repairs.  
  
The squeaking of her pleather boots was putting Shadow on edge. He couldn't understand how it didn't bother Rouge because her ears were much larger and more sensitive. He wished the sound the vehicle made while rumbling through the desert was louder.  
  
"It's not a Chaos Emerald, I can tell you that," Shadow spoke up, "it feels different."  
  
Rouge rolled her eyes at him. She was a treasure hunter! No need to rub salt in the wound- she was already miserable coming to the desert.  
  
"Whatever it is it better be worth my time coming out here." She was greatly annoyed.  
  
"We're here." The man said. Shadow and Rouge exited the vehicle and looked around. In the distance they could see Eggman's carrier leaving. The land appeared pristine and untouched, as if he was just passing through.  
  
"How did he beat us to it?" Rouge scoffed.  
  
"He could've been the source of the energy spike, I guess." Shadow shaded his eyes with his gloved hand and walked forward several paces forward.  
  
"Should we follow him?" Rouge sounded bored.  
  
"It doesn't look like anything happened out here, so no." The Overlander shrugged. "All of my sensors stopped going off."  
  
"There's blood here," Shadow pointed to a few drops he was standing next to, "And two sets of adult Overlander footprints in the dust: one with shoes and one without. These huge footprints are Eggman's."  
  
The Overlander took a sample of the blood for testing. "How do you know it's his foot print?" He asked Shadow.  
  
The black and red hedgehog simply pointed to the little cartoon logo of Eggman's face in the depression. "The man wears his own brand of shoes."  
  
  
  
  
"Tacky." The Overlander said, getting up. He called his supervisor and asked if they should chase after Eggman but was given a negative and ordered to return to base.  
  
Rouge pulled out her phone and snapped pictures of the evidence before taking to the air for an aerial view. That's when she noticed a large area of freshly disturbed earth near where Shadow was standing.  
  
"Hey, Shadow!" She shouted. "Looks like something was right where you're standing but is gone now. Maybe it was Eggman's ship?"  
  
  
Shadow sighed. "I don't think it was anything important. We might as well go back and test the blood we found. We can confront Eggman about it later; he was probably testing out some new weapon that didn’t do any damage."  
  
Rouge landed gracefully and sent the photos she took off to their director.  
  
  
"It must have been a small injury if there's only a few drops. I don't see any tracks that show urgency, so maybe one of them was hurt and that's why they left." The Overlander suggested. “No drag marks.”  
  
"Why would anyone be barefoot out here in the desert? Their feet would've gotten burned." Shadow crossed his arms.  
  
"Maybe he was entertaining a lady friend," Rouge chuckled, "And he got fresh so she stabbed him."  
  
"It could be a man’s footprint; just a small one. Why are we assuming it's Eggman's blood? Besides, If the director wants us to go back we should."  
  
"Let's load up, then." The Overlander adjusted his dense bulletproof vest. "I feel like a turkey in an oven out here."  
  
The trio loaded back into their blessedly air-conditioned vehicle and drove off to the warp ring. While the Overlander was casually chatting with his director over coms, Rouge pulled her phone out and texted Sonic.  
  
  
[WhiteEcho] Hey are you there?  
  
[BlueBlrr91] Whats up  
  
[WhiteEcho] I need you to do me a favor  
  
[WhiteEcho] Keep an eye on eggman for me  
  
[WhiteEcho] And let me know if he's with anyone  
  
  
[BlueBlrr91] what’s he up to now?  
  
[WhiteEcho] I don't know, but we just saw him leave an area of interest  
  
[WhiteEcho] I can't say anything else  
  
[BlueBlrr91] It's quiet on the island, I'll let you know if I see anything  
  
[BlueBlrr91] Is Shadow there? Say hi for me!  
  
  
  
Rouge looked up from her phone at Shadow who was staring out the window. He wasn't even bothered by the constant dinging from her phone. Maybe he was counting the rocks as they passed by.  
  


  
[WhiteEcho] He ignored me saying hi for you lol  
  
[BlueBlrr91] He’s so rude. K have fun out there  
  
  
  
  
Rouge put her phone into sleep mode and nudged Shadow with her foot. "When are you gonna get your own phone?"  
  
"I don't need a phone." He rested his head against the window.  
  
"We can't use our GUN communicators for everything. Besides, how else are you gonna take cute pictures of your food?"  
  
"Why would anyone take pictures of their food?"  
  
"You must eat boring food."  
  
"We can't all take artsy pictures of our burritos, Rouge."  
  
"I was very proud of that burrito I made you! It was gourmet quality." She rarely cooked anything as fancy for herself but for friends she went all-out.  
  
"It was delicious," he admitted, "But I wouldn't put it in the Louvre."  
  
"Anyway, _Sonic says hi_." She smiled at Shadow. He just let out a scoff and rolled his eyes in response.  
  
Back at GUN's base, Shadow and Rouge were sitting with a different Overlander who was almost done making repairs to Omega. The robot was patiently holding her in his hand so that she could reach the smallest parts of his neck with an equally tiny wrench.  
  
  
Her phone dinged. She put the wrench in the front pocket of her overalls and looked at the message.  
  
  
"The results are in," spoke Hope, niece of Eggman and resident teenage tech genius of GUN,"it's Eggman’s blood." She wasn't at all disturbed by this and was a little disappointed that her uncle didn’t die. Hope shoved her phone back into her pocket, took the wrench out again and went back to what she was doing.  
  
  
"So today was a waste of time." Shadow sighed. He was going to be kicking sand and dirt out of his skates for weeks.  
  
  
"Maybe he lost a finger." Omega helpfully suggested. "Addendum: I hope he lost all of his fingers."  
  
"No, we would've found it." Rouge smiled broadly.  
  
"So you still have that theory that Eggman was the source of the energy spike?" Hope brushed her blonde hair behind her ear. "He was probably testing some kind of weapon out there.  
  
"I haven't heard back from Sonic, so I don't think anything is going on at all." Rouge shrugged. "I'm going to bed. Good night, Hope; you too, Shadow."  
  
"If I was there I would have gone after his ship. I then would have retrieved a finger. For reasons.” Omega mused to himself.  
  
Hope waved goodbye as Rouge left and Shadow only let out a grunt. He was thinking about that second set of footprints he saw.  
  
"Is something the matter, Shadow?" Hope asked sweetly.  
  
"Nothing. Just annoyed. You should go to bed, too. Don't work yourself sick." Shadow ran his hand through his spines.  
  
"I'm almost done..." With a few more turns of the wrench her work was finished. "Give that a try, Omega."  
  
  
Hope backed up so Omega could test out his new parts.  
  
"Status update: I am lithe again. Thank you, my favorite meatbag." He nodded.  
  
Hope jumped down and grinned at her work.  
  
  
"Excellent job as usual, Hope." Shadow smiled at the girl. He was curious about Rouge's aloofness and decided to keep an eye on her.  
  
  
  
  
After tucking Hope into bed he silently warped out to his dorm which was adjacent to Rouge's. Shadow looked around the windowless room which contained an overstuffed bookcase with one lone chao plush seated on top. He looked at it fondly, remembering when Cream the Rabbit had given it to him with the promise of it banishing nightmares. A desk, a closet and a twin size bed were the only other articles of furniture.  
  
  
  
That was when he heard Rouge's phone chirp. Sonic had finally replied.

  
  
\-------------------------------------- ☀ --------------------------------------

  
Sonic was enjoying a quiet Sunday afternoon in his beachfront shack when Rouge had texted him. He was just about to fall asleep, too.  
  
 _Keep an eye on Eggman._ What's new? It's not like he had anything else to do today.  
  
He hopped out of his hammock and went over to a wooden dresser to find a pair of binoculars Tails had made him.  
  
  
"No… no… no..." Sonic spoke to himself as he was digging through his junk. His binoculars were missing.  
  
He groaned to himself and sped around the shack looking for the misplaced item. A blue smear whizzed through boxes and around furniture, the breeze caused by his super fast movements blowing loose magazines around.  
  
"Well, looks like I have to go to Tails' to get a new pair."  
  
In a flash Sonic zoomed out to the workshop Tails lived in. The little two-tailed fox was working on another invention and wearing protective gloves and goggles while soldering.  
  
"Hey, bro!" Sonic cheerfully shouted.  
  


Tails jumped and nearly dropped his tool. "Sonic!" He yelped.  
  
"Oh, sorry! Didn't mean to scare you." Sonic lightly pat Tails on the back.  
  
Tails clicked off his tool with his thumb and took off his goggles. "What's up, Sonic?"  
  
"I got a text from Rouge earlier. She wants me to spy on Egg-face and I can't find my binoculars. Can I borrow a pair?" He smiled uneasily, eyebrows upturned. "I promise I won't lose this pair!"  
  
"Okay, but seriously- don't lose these. They're expensive to make. Maybe I should go with you…" Tails pulled off his protective gloves and put on his plain white ones.  
  
  
  
  
" _Maybe_ we should invite Knuckles and Amy, too. Make a day out of it." Sonic suggested.  
  
"I guess that could be fun." Tails dropped his goggles on the table and walked over to a shelf where he had a spare pair of binoculars sitting out.  
  
Sonic spoke into his little wrist communicator. "Hey Knucks, Sticks or Amy, you there?"  
  
Amy was the first to respond as if she was waiting with bated breath. "Hi, Sonic!"  
  
"Let's meet up at the beach by Eggstain's. I got a mission from Rouge."  
  
"Rouge?" Knuckles asked nervously, a slight blush painting his cheeks.  
  
"Yes, Rouge," Sonic said, "bring a snack!"  
  


\-------------------------------------- ✫ --------------------------------------  
  


The group sat on the beach, enjoying the mild weather waiting for Eggman to return. Tails looked at the lair through his binoculars, wringing his tails together.  
  
"I've never met this Rouge; is she trustworthy?" Sticks the Badger asked as she dug through the sand for fractured shells she could weaponize.  
  
"She's great," Sonic said, "but will steal your jewelry if you're not watching. She goes on missions with Shadow and a robot named Omega for GUN."  
  
"She doesn't sound very smart. Who would willingly cavort with robots? Maybe she's a robot herself!" Sticks was not a badger that trusted anything mechanical.  
  
"Omega is a nice robot, Sticks." Amy said as she turned a page of the sappy romance novel she was reading. She sat in a beach chair with her purse beside her in the sand. She carried Sonic's phone in it along with other junk of his.  
  
"If we spot anything out here you may get to meet her and Omega. Even Shadow, maybe." Sonic shrugged. He and Knuckles were building something out of sand that sort of half-resembled a castle.  
  
  
"Last time we saw Shadow he was mad and I think he tried to kill you," Sticks dug deeper into the sand, "I still trust him more than a robot."  
  
"He didn't try to kill me," Sonic corrected her, "we have a _rivalry_."  
  
"Uh huh." Amy said unimpressed. "Tails, do you see anything?"  
  
"Nope," he adjusted his binoculars, "Maybe he stopped for junk food on the way back from wherever he was."  
  
Knuckles walked out to the water, took up a huge armful of wet sand and dropped it directly onto Sonic's head.  
  
  
  
  
"Whoops, sorry Sonic." He chuckled.  
  
"Ugh! Knuckles, watch where you're going! I'm going to be digging sand out of my needles for a year…" He shook the sand off, getting it all over Amy and Sticks.  
  
  
The girls yelped with outrage at this and threatened to throw Sonic into the water if he wasn't more careful.  
  
"Hey, guys... Eggman is back." Tails said. He watched the scientist carefully land his carrier on the outside of the lair. Everyone moved to where Tails was sitting and looked out to the lair but without binoculars they couldn't see much. Knuckles falsely believed that if he mimicked holding a pair it would help.  
  
  
Eggman exited the carrier holding something in his arms.  
  
"It looks like a white curtain or maybe a rug?" Tails seemed unsure of what he was seeing. Sonic took the binoculars from him to take a look for himself.  
  
"More like he's carrying a person. Actually, it's a human woman." Sonic was scandalized! Another human on the island? One Overlander was way more than adequate. He took his phone out and texted Rouge.  
  
"A woman in white? Like a bride?" Amy sounded interested and took the binoculars from Sonic. "Maybe she'll keep him busy for the rest of his life and he won't bother us anymore. Ooh he's doing the princess carry! Oh, how _romantic_ … wait… she's asleep. Or dead." Now Amy sounded concerned.

“Amy, why would Eggman have a corpse?” Sonic rolled his eyes.

“Mad science experiment?” Amy shrugged. “I’m just guessing, here.”

“He’s nuts but he’s not _that_ kind of nuts!” The blue hedgehog tried to convince himself.

“I agree.” Tails said. “Even if he did, he wouldn’t start with a _human_.”  
  
  
"We need to investigate! He may have kidnapped someone! Or worse… she willingly went with him!" Sticks stood up and held her boomerang in the air. "We can't allow Eggman to breed! Imagine: a disgusting dozen of bald babies with ugly mustaches! The horror… _the horror_ …"  
  
  
  
  
[WhiteEcho] What's going on?  
  
  
[BlueBlrr91] we're camped out watching eggdude's lair and  
  
[BlueBlrr91] he got out of his carrier and hes got a girl with him

  
  
[WhiteEcho] a girl or a woman?  
  
  
[BlueBlrr91] a woman. A human and she's asleep or unconscious  
  
  
[WhiteEcho] She hurt?  
  
  
[BlueBlrr91] Doesn't look like it  
  
[WhiteEcho] Thanks Sonic. Keep an eye on him let me know if he leaves.  
  
  
[WhiteEcho] I'll see if I can do a flyby to the island tonight. Don't confront him unless  
  
[WhiteEcho] You think something is wrong. Wait till I get there  
  
  
[BlueBlrr91] sure  
  
  
"What's she saying?" Amy peeked at Sonic's phone.  
  
  
"She says not to engage unless we think something's wrong," Sonic handed his phone to Amy to hold, "and that she's gonna try to come out here tonight to investigate."  
  
Sticks growled. "I don't like this. I hate waiting!"  
  
  
"Rouge is coming by? _Tonight?_ Oh no!" Knuckles jumped up, "I have to…" he paused, "you know… get ready!" He ran off, kicking sand everywhere.  
  
  
"Subtle," Amy remarked, "he's still got a crush on her."  
  
  
Sonic chuckled. "Well she _is_ a babe…" Amy shot him a dirty look and Sonic shrugged in response.  
  
  
"Wait, how long do we have to be out here?" Tails was frustrated and wanted to go back to his lab and finish what he was doing.  
  
"We don't all have to be out here. Sonic and I can stay while you guys go back to what you were doing. We can meet up again if Eggman makes a move." Amy smiled at Sonic who only met her look with a raised eyebrow. He decided it wasn't worth the stress so he agreed.  
  
  
  
  
Tails made Amy promise she wouldn't lose this pair of binoculars and left. Sticks took home her respectable collection of shells, a bit depressed she did not have the chance to use them.  
  
The winter sun sunk behind the sparkling ocean, illuminated by a full moon.  
  
Sonic and Amy built a small fire on the beach to keep warm with and were laying back on the beach chair together, watching Comedy Chimp episodes on his phone. She rested her head on Sonic's shoulder in total bliss.  
  
"What if Eggman did run off and get eloped? That's so weird." Amy wondered. Now she had marriage on the brain. She was only thirteen years old but loved to imagine wearing a gorgeous, flowing dress down the aisle once she was old enough. Her hair done up with real roses and a veil of the most sparkling gossamer that floated on the air… Sonic in a tuxedo waiting for her at an altar with tears in his eyes…  
  
"Amy, your sappy romance paperbacks are complete fiction. Nobody would marry Eggman. It's probably a robot," Sonic chuckled, "though he did make a robot bride or two when I was a lot younger…"  
  
"They didn't last long did they?"  
  
"Nope!" Sonic grinned from ear to ear. Amy was so taken with Sonic's smile she was tempted to lean in and kiss him on those fawn-colored lips.  
  
"Oop, I see movement." Sonic reached down and picked up the binoculars.

Amy frowned- Yet another nice moment ruined by Eggman.  
  
"The woman is okay and… all that white stuff? That's actually all her hair. Look." He handed Amy the binoculars. "Check it out." Amy took the pair and sat forward staring intently.  
  
"She's running… running… stopped. Looks like she's holding a book? She went back to Eggman and they're talking. I can't tell what they're talking about, but their body language tells me they're both okay with being around each other."  
  
Sonic was already texting Rouge again.  
  
  
[BlueBlrr91] Guess who! We're on the beach by eggman's  
  
[WhiteEcho] Hi Sonic, good timing I was about to fly out.  
  
  
[BlueBlrr91] Eggman is with a woman with way too much hair  
  
[BlueBlrr91] They're out talking  
  
  
  
  
[WhiteEcho] Ooh spicy!  
  
[BlueBlrr91] Is Shadow coming?  
  
[WhiteEcho] No, see you in an hour. Stay put  
  
  
[BlueBlrr91] Aw ok see you soon rouge! Knux is excited to see you again  
  
  
[WhiteEcho] ;)  
  
  
  
  
"She's facing this way but I don't think she can see us. She looks... sad." Amy frowned. "She just went back inside with him." Sonic got up and was kicking sand on the fire to put it out.  
  
  
"Rouge is on her way; she says to stay put."  
  
  
"Why are you putting out the fire?" Amy asked as she put the binoculars in her purse.  
  
  
"You said she was looking this way, right? I don't want us to get spotted."  
  
  
"Good point but how will Rouge see us?"  
  
  
"Um…" Sonic was stumped. “She'll text us!"

\-------------------------------------- ✫ --------------------------------------  
  


  
  
Rouge packed a pink, heart-shaped messenger bag with a number of tiny bombs, a loaded handgun, a full magazine, a warp ring and her lipstick  
  
  
She normally didn't go anywhere without Shadow but she wanted some time to herself. It had been a long time since she was at the Seaside Island and would enjoy a ‘short tropical vacation.’  
  
Since she was doing this under the table, she felt it was best to be as discreet as possible. Her plan was to fly out a good distance then use the warp ring to get to the island.  
  
  
The GUN base was a mountainside facility built overlooking the sea and despite what its appearance would suggest, leaving the massive, castle-like fortress was actually quite simple with the proper clearance.  
  
  
"You'll get struck by lightning." She heard a voice from behind her. It was Shadow.  
  
"Shadow! You scared me."  
  
"What are you doing out here?" He crossed his arms and leaned against the wall, blocking the stairwell.  
  
"I should ask you that," Rouge put her hand on her hip, "are you spying on me?"  
  
"I want to go with you."  
  
"We can't both go out without permission."  
  
"We can if we're back before morning." Shadow smirked.  
  
"Is this about that second set of footprints?"  
  
"Something about it is bothering me and I can't put my finger on why that is."  
  
"It's a human woman. Sonic said Eggman carried her into his base earlier and he saw her again just now. That's why I'm leaving. I'm going to investigate."  
  
"Why are you going alone?"  
  
Rouge raised an eyebrow and then chuckled. Shadow was so naive.  
  
"What's so funny?" He was annoyed.  
  
"Because if Eggman isn't doing anything wrong we don't need to start a scandal. The blood was his. There was no struggle. No reason to give us more paperwork than necessary."  
  
"I'm still going."

  
"Fine," Rouge sighed, "are you going to teleport us or are you going to use my warp ring?"  
  
"I'll teleport us." He stepped forward and took Rouge by the upper arm.  
  
"We're going to Seaside Island. Specifically, the beach across from Eggman's lair." **  
**


	4. Name Of The Game

Shadow and Rouge teleported several feet above the beach so they wouldn't accidentally appear on or in anything. They landed softly behind Sonic and Amy, who were still kicking sand on the freshly extinguished bonfire.

"Yikes!" Amy cried when she felt the puff of air from the teleport push her forward. Sonic nearly jumped out of his skin when Shadow tapped him on the shoulder.

"Being defenseless will get you killed, Sonic." He smirked, intentionally baring uncomfortably sharp-looking canines.

Sonic's spines puffed out defensively before he spun around to look Shadow in the eye. He grinned trying to cover up the fact that he nearly gave up the ghost.

" _I thought you said Shadow wasn't coming…_ " Sonic spoke through clenched teeth.

"I invited myself." He stepped around Sonic to greet Amy.

"Hi, Sonic." Rouge giggled. "Hi, Amy."

"Don't startle me like that!" Amy sighed with relief. "You almost got a hammer to the face." She brushed past Shadow and hugged Rouge tightly.

"I tried to sneak out without getting his attention but he busted me anyway. Sorry, Sonic." Rouge shrugged and hugged Amy back.

Sonic brushed down his spines with his hands.

The quartet moved to the cover of nearby bushes and discussed what they saw. Shadow described the footprints and the weird energy spike that GUN detected. Rouge showed them the pictures she took at the site. Sonic scrolled through them and wondered what kind of weapon could make such a distinctive shape in the disturbed earth. It was nearly a perfect circle; maybe it was an exceptionally large Egg Carrier, or perhaps the base of a new missile he was testing out.

"If he was testing a big weapon out there and got hurt… where is the weapon _now?_ And what's that lady got to do with it?" Sonic handed the phone back to Rouge.

"It was hardly much blood, so maybe it was a simple paper cut or something," Rouge put her phone in her purse, "unless it happened off-site. But you said that he didn't appear injured."

"From what we saw she was wearing just a tube top and a ripped sarong. Maybe he found her out there in the desert." Amy shrugged. "A lost tribe, maybe?"

Shadow ignored the conversation going on next to him and stared off at the silvery tower in the distance. It was a clear night and the moon's fullness made it easy for him to see off in the distance. His eyes focused on the entrance to the lair and he let out a low growl when he saw the doors open.

"Shadow?" Rouge whispered. He didn't respond.

"Shads, why are you growling?" Sonic asked.

Still no response.

Amy summoned her hammer just in case she had to clobber the dark hedgehog.

"Shadow," Rouge snapped her fingers next to his ear, "focus."

"Hm?" Shadow turned to Rouge and saw the nervous faces of the other two hedgehogs. "Sorry, lost in thought. Someone just left the lair."

It was at that moment that Sheptilah teleported high above the water and let out a scream.

They heard the resulting splash and turned to the water. They watched as she was pushed over by a wave and rolled face-down onto the beach.

"Graceful." Rouge whispered.

All four kept their eyes locked squarely on the human while she walked to a nearby tree and wrung out her hair. The Mobians looked at each other and then back at Sheptilah.

Amy gripped the handle of her hammer hard when she saw the Overlander use magic to dry herself off but loosened her grip when the human began to sob.

"Amy… _Amy don't_ …" Sonic whispered as the pink hedgehog rose from her crouched position and walked toward the woman. It wasn't in her nature to not comfort someone who was upset. Shadow pinched the bridge of his nose in frustration.

"Are you… are you okay?" Amy slowly approached the human, still carrying her hammer. “Miss?”

The woman looked over Amy with surprise and stood up. Rouge flew over to Amy as backup in case the Overlander attacked.

Sheptilah took a step back when Rouge made herself known.

"Did my crying disturb you?" Sheptilah finally spoke. "I apologize. I am alright." She knelt down on one knee to be at eye-level with the much shorter Mobians. The sparkling gem on her chest caught Rouge's attention.

The other two hedgehogs emerged from the bushes and calmly walked over to their friends by the kneeling Overlander.

"My name is Sheptilah." She smiled sweetly. She had never seen so many creatures this brightly colored before.

"I'm Amy Rose, this is Rouge, Sonic and Shadow." She offered her hand.

"Strange to see clever folk of your species and colors. We had bats where I am from, but not your kind. What are you?" She took Amy's hand and gently shook it. There was something warm and familiar about the lot of them but Sheptilah couldn't place why.

"We're hedgehogs." Sonic said, offering his hand. Sheptilah shook his as well. They all felt more at ease now that they've had their introductions.

"What's clever folk?" Rouge declined to offer her gloved hand but instead smiled.

"You; you're clever folk. Sapient non-humans."

"We call ourselves Mobians." Shadow corrected her.

"Mobians, then. I am a Nannaic witch." She bowed slightly out of respect. She sensed unusual power from all four of them and did not want to bring their wrath. Rouge rested her hand on her purse that held her weapons.

"Why were you crying?" Amy asked sincerely.

"Death in the family. I apologize again for disturbing you. I thought I was alone."

"You're related to Eggman?" Rouge asked.

"Oh, no. He is a…" Sheptilah paused to find the word. "A friend? A friend."

Shadow and Rouge looked at each other and then back at Sheptilah. Sonic stifled a laugh. Eggman? Having friends?

"Why were you in the desert?" Rouge asked her. "We were out there earlier and saw Eggman leave."

"Don't worry about it." Sheptilah waved her hand not clutching the book.

"Answer the question," Shadow demanded. "Why were you in the desert?"

Amy crossed her arms and frowned at Shadow's rudeness. Sheptilah brushed her hair behind her ear and smiled. "Don't worry about it. You kids are kind of nosy." She repeated.

"You shouldn't trust him, Sheptilah," Sonic said taking a step forward, "he's a bad guy."

"Maybe," the Overlander said, "but I owe him for rescuing me." She realized she said too much and face-palmed.

"Rescuing you from _what_ , exactly?" Rouge stretched her wings a little. She could sense Sheptilah was about to make a break for it.

"I don't want to talk about it right now." Sheptilah was feeling overwhelmed. _Fight or flight,_ she thought. _Why am I being interrogated at every turn?_

"Guys, maybe if we tried not ganging up on her she'd answer our questions." Amy spoke in her 'therapist' voice.

Sheptilah turned and broke into a sprint but was immediately stopped by Sonic who didn't even break a sweat. He moved so fast that he was almost an invisible blur kicking up sand. She tried turning directions and was met by Sonic's smirking face at every one.

"You're not going to outrun him, honey." Rouge called.

"So I'm trapped." Sheptilah gave in. If she had her familiar or even half of her powers restored she'd be able to blow all of them to the other side of the planet without even lifting more than a finger. She brushed the salt that was still on her skin and hair away.

"I'm afraid we can't let you just walk away unless we know you're alright and not evil or anything like that. Doctor Eggman has done a lot of bad things to us. Do you understand?" Sonic tried to explain the situation.

"What has he done to you?"

"Well... he roboticized many of my friends, destroys our town, tries to take over the world every other day…" Sonic trailed on and on.

"Tried to blow up the planet _several_ times." Shadow added.

"Eggman cuts in line at the food court all the time." Amy was still scrolling through her phone.

"He cheats at sports, too, since we're being petty." Rouge nodded.

Sheptilah thought about this. How could such a nasty person be the one destined to set her free? Was her understanding of the spell that put her in the crystal flawed? Why would a human hurt the clever folk and why would someone so obviously talented fail so often? She did not know what 'roboticized' meant but she guessed that it was to turn living creatures into soulless metal golems. She was angry at the thought of someone abusing living things. She came from a culture where even the royalty were servants to those that needed their aid.

"I was trapped in a crystal in the desert for a very, very long time. So long that the stars have shifted in the sky. I belonged to a dying race of witch people known as the Nannae who protected the planet you now call Mobius. We called it Zanu back then. My people put me there and I was found today by Doctor Eggman. He let me out."

"A giant crystal, huh?" Rouge walked up to her. "Were you a prisoner or something? And, most importantly, is the crystal still there?"

"No. I wasn't a prisoner and the crystal is gone. I was put there to defend the planet whenever I woke up at a later time. I was their _queen_. I was supposed to be awoken by someone who would help me defend Za-, I mean, Mobius."

Amy pulled her phone from her purse and was looking up the Nannae people. She got no results at first because she searched it phonetically. She tried several other search terms and eventually got something. She put her hammer face-down in the sand and leaned on the handle while she read the articles.

"Defend it from what, exactly?" Shadow looked the Overlander in the eye. Crimson met violet directly for the first time and she swore his stare almost burned through her.

"The… the witch-eaters. A race of semi-sentient beings that wanted our Oracle Stones." She gestured to the charm on her chest. "This. The source of our powers."

"How do we know you aren't lying to us, though? I would say I was a queen, too, if I fell out of a crystal." Rouge reached into her purse and took out her phone to snap a photo of Sheptilah candidly. She made sure the flash wasn't on when she took the picture.

"You don't have to believe me." Sheptilah shrugged. "But I don't know how to prove to you what you want to know."

"This article I found says that the Nannae were a diverse race of humans that disappeared over five-thousand years ago and not much is known about them except that they built a massive oasis in the desert and were likely extremely hospitable." Amy read from her phone. "Another one says some ancient paintings suggest they often had Mobian familiars to aid in their magic."

"A familiar?" Rouge asked. "Like a pet?"

"Oh, no," Sheptilah shook her head, "familiars are our equals. Predestined creatures that pool their powers and abilities and their friendship allows them to do great things. Most of them also had Oracle Stones of their own. There are some spells and actions that can't be done without a familiar. Please… _please_ let me leave now. I will make a deal with you if you let me leave." Sheptilah yawned, "I need to charge."

"What kind of deal?" Shadow eyed her suspiciously.

The Overlander suddenly bit into the webbing between the thumb and index finger, drawing blood. Amy looked away with disgust and Sonic's jaw hung open with surprise and horror. Shadow remained unphased by this sudden behavior from the human. Rouge cringed at the sight and felt bile rise in her throat.

Sheptilah bent down and picked up a handful of sand and squeezed her bloody palm. She used a portion of her remaining energy to create three orbs from the mixture. Each was a tiny glass marble with a red swirl in the center. The wound she created in her hand healed itself instantly.

"This is a witch orb. You can summon me from anywhere with this if you squeeze it and say my name three times. I'm sorry, I only had enough power to make three and there are four of you…" She tossed one at Sonic."Try it. Run to somewhere I cannot see you and then summon me. I will appear."

He caught the marble and looked at it. It appeared like the typical child's toy. He nodded and sped off to the other end of the beach. Sonic squeezed the marble and spoke her name three times. In a moment Sheptilah appeared next to him.

"Cool!" He ran back to where the others were and summoned her again. “It’s auto-magic!”

"Anytime, anywhere, this will work." She tossed one to Shadow who caught it immediately. Sheptilah handed the last one to Amy. "I will keep an eye on Doctor Eggman for you. If he gets up to any trouble I will stop him."

"Aw, I don't get one?" Rouge pouted.

"I'm sorry. I will give you something else when I am not drained. I promise, Miss Rouge."

Shadow looked over the strange object. Clearly this Overlander meant no harm and was simply a fish out of temporal water. He did not fully trust her but was more at ease knowing re-capture was simple.

Sheptilah was starting to feel greatly fatigued now. She hadn't eaten and certainly did not get any restful sleep in the time she was suspended in the reliquary.

"I'll hold you to it." The white bat smiled.

"Please don't let anyone know I'm here. I need to rest for a few nights. After that I will gladly serve you with my magic." Sheptilah bowed to them. She tried to teleport back to the lair but she did not have enough energy to do so. The woman seemed to vanish for a moment but then come back into focus.

She tried again with the same results.

"I promise you kids I am much more impressive when I'm not so groggy."

"Are you trying to get back to the lair?" Rouge asked.

"Yes."

"I gotcha." She grabbed Sheptilah by the waist and flew off with her over the water.

The human clung to the bat tightly in surprise.

"You're a bit heavier than you look, Overlander," Rouge glided over the sea effortlessly and gently landed at the entrance to the lair. "Maybe consider a haircut?"

"Your grumpy friend Shadow is a lot less agreeable than you are. Thank you, miss Rouge."

"I wanted to isolate you for a moment, actually."

"Oh?"

Shadow teleported himself next to Rouge. The human was startled by the sudden movement but then let out a chuckle.

"Mobians will never cease to amaze me."

"Shadow and I work for GUN, which is a worldwide police force that protects the planet from things like Eggman and aliens. You're going to be a person of interest. If GUN forces come looking for you... don't attack them. We're on your side."

"Do they know about me?" Sheptilah sounded worried.

"No, not yet. We had to investigate the weird energy spike this morning in the desert. As far as they know Eggman was the cause of it."

Shadow pointed at the Overlander. "If you make one false move we will immediately take you into custody."

"Why aren't you taking me in _now?_ " She worried that maybe her magic was subconsciously brainwashing the clever folk into leaving her be.

"I think you could be of more use to us right now if we don't bring attention to you. GUN will eventually have to know about your existence; especially because of your mention of witch-eating beings." Shadow crossed his arms.

"They are dangerous." Sheptilah nodded. "They're a scourge. We couldn't kill them so we trapped them in the moon before I was crystallized. Something must have happened because I shouldn't be awake unless they've gotten out."

"The _moon?_ " Rouge looked at Shadow worryingly.

"Yes, the center of it. Did something happen?"

"A few years ago the moon was halved by a weapon wielded by your 'savior' Doctor Eggman." Shadow said.

For a moment Sheptilah forgot how to breathe. She swallowed hard and tried to calm her trembling body.

"Take me to GUN."


	5. Just A Girl

"Stay put, lady." Shadow took Rouge by the hand and teleported to GUN's main gate. He then cast the spell to summon Sheptilah. When the human arrived there was a slight delay and she landed hard on the soaked asphalt. The rain was pouring heavily and lightning flashed overhead.

"I just got dry." Sheptilah lamented. Rouge helped her stand up.

"Director? We've just brought in a person of interest," Rouge spoke into her wrist communicator, "she's a friendly, so no need for armed support."

"It's... two in the morning." A groggy male voice spoke. "Alright. Meet me in my office."

The giant metal doors slid open and the two Mobians escorted Sheptilah inside. The guards stationed on both sides of the hall took their hands off their weapons when they saw the Overlander was not cuffed.

"Oh great… more metal. I can feel it." Sheptilah's eyes darted in every possible direction. She went from a sleek, brightly lit metal tower to a more rugged, darker one. She almost preferred Eggman's lair simply because she missed that amazing sofa she woke up on. Sheptilah's eyes met that of Mobians and humans as well as robots but she could not read their emotions.

Shadow and Rouge escorted her to the director's office. He was an unassuming looking elderly man in a bathrobe and pajamas with a fair complexion washed out under the harsh fluorescent lights. His graying hair matched the gray of his eyes. The lines in his face were deep and broad like canyons carved out by rivers.

His office was large but empty. There were no windows, much like the rest of the building, and few pieces of furniture. A desk, chair and laptop were all that was in it.

"This is Sheptilah," Rouge gestured to the woman, "self-proclaimed queen of the Nannae."

"I see you brought a very under-dressed self-proclaimed queen into my office," He said while handing her his bathrobe for modesty. "My name is Boris Cabbot, I'm the director for Team Dark." He had a voice like honeyed gravel.

Sheptilah accepted the robe and wrapped it around herself like a cloak. "I apologize for not keeping up with the fashions. I've been asleep for five thousand years." Sheptilah covered her mouth with her hand and yawned.

"Ah, she's funny." Cabbot smiled. "So what's all this, then?"

Shadow explained as briefly as possible what was going on. Cabbot understood the situation but ordered them to put Sheptilah in a cell for holding while verification was done. She did not protest. Shadow and Rouge escorted the witch to the prison hold deep under the fortress. It was a long elevator ride down and it was becoming evident that Sheptilah was claustrophobic. Her breathing quickened throughout the descent; almost to the point of hyperventilation.

"If you keep breathing like that you are going to pass out." Shadow warned her.

"How far down do we have to go?" Beads of sweat formed on her forehead. She was wringing her hair in her hands nervously.

"Not much longer, Tilly." Rouge smiled at her, "I don't like being underground, either. The pressure change makes my ears pop." She was texting instructions to Sonic and Amy on her phone and apologies to Knuckles for not seeing him while she was there. She wanted the two hedgehogs to stand down but keep an eye on Eggman as usual.

Sheptilah thought the nickname the bat had just bestowed on her was adorable. With a chime they finally reached their destination and stepped off the elevator into yet another dismal hallway.

Beyond extremely thick steel doors was the prison section. It was well lit and wide open. Sheptilah had to shield her eyes from the painful brightness. Dozens of spaced-out glass cubes with air holes drilled into them at the top were aligned in a grid. Each one was supposed to be a tiny room to house a prisoner but GUN currently had nobody detained, so Sheptilah was alone aside from the robot guards standing at the entrance.

Their footsteps echoed, or rather, Shadow's metallic footsteps echoed in the cavernous space.

Each block had a number painted on the floor. They relegated Sheptilah to the fifth cube as it had a bed in it. Rouge held her communicator up to the cube and it registered her identification and the door slid open.

"Someone will be by in the morning to collect you." Shadow said as the door shut with a hiss.

"I have a lot to talk about when that time comes." Sheptilah laid back on the bed. She tucked her book under her hair and fell into a dreamless sleep almost instantly.

  
\-------------------------------------- ☀ -------------------------------------- 

"Hey, boss?" Cubot poked Ivo in his side. "It's morning." He was still slumped over his console in a deep sleep. He woke up with a snort and looked around. Had he fallen asleep while at work? And what of the woman? Ivo questioned for a moment if he dreamed her up.

He looked around for the elusive silvery lady but found no sign of her except for the bronze circlet in his hand. Cubot was still poking the rotund man in the side when Orbot came in arms flailing and yelling.

"That lady is gone!" He shouted. "I checked surveillance and she left last night, came back and then left again with Shadow and Rouge."

"Oh, great." Eggman looked around for his sunglasses which had fallen onto the floor. "Bring me something to eat and a lot of coffee. I need that woman back as soon as possible. I need to weaponize her before GUN does." He reached for his glasses and felt his back pop as he did so. He groaned and brought up a search on his computer. Orbot and Cubot floated off to get the doctor what he asked for.

"Did you morons ever do that search I asked you to do?" He called to them.

"We forgot!" He heard Cubot call back. He sighed and began the search himself and came across some extremely short articles on the internet about them.

Abridged Encyclopedia of Mobian Indigenous Peoples

By Abdullah Moers

Nannae, The: [Nuh-Nay]

Not much is known about these people except that they had disappeared suddenly five thousand years ago. Second-hand accounts, including the name of the people, from ancient texts of other cultures depict them as a genreous group of both humans and furries that used their magic granted to them by their so-called Oracle Stones embedded in their chests, but no remains have ever been found with a Stone intact.

Some folklore depicts them as having been nomadic at first but finally settling in the desert to build an artificial oasis. The validity of these secondhand accounts are heavily disputed.

Some clay tablets recovered with proto-cuneiform writing at Nannae ziggurat oasis ruins in the Dust Hill desert have yet to be fully deciphered.

Doctor Eggman needed to get her back right away. As far as he was concerned it is the rule of 'finders vs keepers'. Orbot and Cubot brought him his breakfast and he wolfed down his food so he could get back to work. If he wasn't contacted soon he would have to go and retrieve his lost property himself and that gauntlet still needed fixing.

  
\-------------------------------------- ☽ ☾ -------------------------------------- 

  
"Good morning, Miss." A buff red-furred fox in uniform tapped his knuckle on the glass to wake up Sheptilah. "The president wants to see you." He was holding some sneakers, sweatpants and a sweatshirt with the unit's logo for Sheptilah to put on.

She sat up and looked around with blurred, sleepy eyes. She stretched her back and smoothed down her messy hair.

"The president of what?" She yawned as the room came into focus.

"The president of GUN. His name is Abraham Tower." The fox answered in a polite tone. He opened the door for her so she could get the clothes to change into.

The fox was about to turn around so she would have privacy but instead of putting the clothes on traditionally she opted to 'poof' them on herself instantly. The rags and bathrobe she was wearing previously had vanished into nothingness. It felt good to have some of her magic back.

This startled the fox at first but then he shook his head in disbelief and escorted her to the president's chambers at the top floor.

It was much like Cabbot's office but larger and with a wide window that overlooked the choppy, storm-torn sea. Shadow and Rouge were looking out the window and talking quietly to themselves while Abraham was tapping away at his laptop on the computer. Both Shadow and Rouge's sensitive ears swiveled toward the door when they heard footsteps approach.

"Sir?" The fox knocked on the president's door.

"Come in." He said.

The fox entered with the woman who looked much perkier now that she had some sleep. Abraham stood and greeted Sheptilah by firmly shaking her hand. He looked her in the eyes and she in his. The fox left to stand outside the president's door.

"Your eyes… they're like the soil and the sea… they're gorgeous." She had never seen someone with differently colored eyes before.

"Yes, I was born with the condition called 'heterochromia'." He was unimpressed by the flattery.

"Are you able to see normally?" She tilted her head slightly.

"Yes."

"What can I do for you, president Tower?" She let go of his hand and crossed her arms. Sheptilah could tell immediately the man was cold and standoffish.

"I'm told that you are an ancient queen and a powerful witch." Abraham went back to his desk and sat in his chair. "And that Eggman has once again started something that spells doom for our planet."

"I was powerful, but not anymore." Sheptilah shrugged. Rouge and Shadow sat down in the two chairs across from Abraham and Tilly took the cue to sit in between them, but since there weren't enough chairs she sat on the 'air' with magic instead and laid her book in her lap.

"Are you talking about the witch-eaters?" She raised an eyebrow.

"Yes." Abraham said shortly.

Tilly raised her hand and slowly waved her hand in a circle, forming what looked like smoke. It took the shape of a creature in white that constantly shifted forms but overall maintained a viscous consistency. The figure was pulsing and oozing in the palm of Sheptilah's' hand and even took 'bites' out of her fingers.

"Shape shifting creatures driven purely by instinct. They ate our Oracle Stones and slowly wiped out my race. They would eat anything living, but seemed to really be after our stones. A legend was passed down through generations that it was their jealousy of our powers that drove them to kill us but this is untrue. They are merely animals that did as nature intended them to."

"There have been no reports or sightings of such creatures." Abraham frowned.

"The creatures may be weak, but they will regroup. They will multiply and they will make themselves known." The witch almost sounded like she was in a dreamy, subdued state.

They watched Sheptilah bend and move the figure she created with magic across the desk. The witch eater chased figures of humans and Mobians, some with white spots on their chest representing Oracle Stones and was shown devouring them whole.

I had a familiar…" Sheptilah stared intently at the figures she was manipulating. She wiggled her fingers to have the form show a silhouette of herself and her familiar, both with Oracle Stones, which was a armadillo woman. "Her name was Hebat and she was murdered during the final battle." Tears welled up in Tilly's eyes as the figure was torn limb from limb. "They stole part of my soul from me when they killed her. It's why I'm so weak."

"What's a familiar, exactly?" Shadow asked. "You mentioned the concept last night."

"A familiar is a person, place or thing that the witch in question is destined to spend their life with. They are like two individuals that share one soul. It's rare to have a nonliving familiar but it has happened. My great grandmother's familiar was the ziggurat we lived on itself. She was never able to leave it."

The figures began to take the shape of a human man with a hedgehog standing hand-in-hand and using magic.

"We pooled our powers and did great things. If all my people came together as one we could move stars if we wanted to."

She wiped her eyes with the back of her hand and the figures faded.

"Tell me more about this final battle." Abraham was listening intently.

Sheptilah took in a shaky breath and made the figures appear again. This time they were entire armies of humans and furries fighting the creatures that congealed into one giant beast. One by one the witches fell except for Sheptilah and another figure with a cat furry.

"My older mother, her familiar and I managed to seal the remaining creatures in the moon since we were unable to kill them. Our magic was at a disadvantage with them; we still don't know why. We just assumed that nothing would ever happen to the moon to let them out.

Countless Nannae gave their lives to seal the creatures in the core of the satellite and only a few of us were left so they put me in a crystal in the desert in case something happened to the moon. Just as a precaution. I expected to be in that suspended state for all time."

Rouge and Shadow felt guilt wash over them. They had indirectly helped cause this by giving Eggman the Chaos Emeralds years prior. This was their fault. Rouge looked like she was about to say this but Shadow shot her a look.

"But I did not know I was going to be put in the crystal. When the survivors were sure there were no creatures left on the planet they sacrificed all of their power to seal me up. The spell was also a prophecy. 'Whomsoever should release the crystal witch will be her guardian and bound to her in the new world. They will help her destroy the creatures or die trying.'"

"Doctor Eggman had blown up the moon as an act of terrorism with a giant weapon." Rouge gently rubbed Tilly's shoulder, "How could he be the one meant to guard you?"

"I don't know why the Universe does what it does, Miss Rouge… but why does the moon look whole?" She looked at the bat with sad eyes.

"Because he 'repaired' it with metal and most of the damage was to the side that doesn't face us." Shadow spoke through gritted teeth.

"Oh," Tilly sounded emotionless. After a moment of silence Abraham cleared his throat.

"Sheptilah… as tragic as this is we must inform you that you need to have some medical work done seeing as how you have been asleep for thousands of years. Today you will be seen by some doctors who will inspect you and give you vaccines. After that, we will discuss your options."

She furrowed her eyebrows. "Inspect me? Discuss my options? You cannot keep me here." She raised her voice defensively.

"We can and we will." Abraham asserted. He was unafraid. Shadow stood and faced Sheptilah ready to fight her if he had to.

Sheptilah stood and leaned over the desk and stared the man in the eye, "I am not a prisoner," she hissed, "I must prepare to fight again. It takes time and I must find a familiar, if I even have one."

"It's my duty to protect this planet and the people on it. I have to take every precaution." Tower persisted.

"I protected this planet long before your family tree was sowed!" Her anger made the desk slightly rattle. She inhaled deeply to calm herself.

"Tilly, don't get angry. It's okay." Rouge frowned at her.

"You can't escape for long anyway," Shadow held up the orb, "I have this, remember?"

Sheptilah glared at the hedgehog with burning violet eyes and snapped her fingers. The orb vanished from Shadow's grip and appeared between her index finger and her thumb.

"You were saying?" She smirked at the now growling hedgehog and handed the orb to Rouge for safekeeping.

"Understand this, President Tower: I am only staying for your 'inspection' out of the goodness of my heart. The moment I have had enough I will be returning to the island your two operatives pulled me from last night. I have unfinished business to attend to."

Abraham understood this woman was going to be difficult. He called for the fox to come back in and escort the three of them out to the medical wing of the fortress and two additional robotic armed guards to be with Sheptilah at all times.

Shadow and Rouge had been told to supervise the witch as they had a rapport together. Sheptilah was given a rather thorough inspection by the doctors.

X-rays proved the Oracle Stone was indeed part of her body and not ornamental. Blood tests were inconclusive and something seemed to gum up the machines but it was determined that her blood type is O- by using a very old antigen testing technique. She was administered a broad spectrum vaccine to prepare her for the new diseases of the century.

The site of the shot and blood tests on her arm was red and irritated from the contact with the steel of the needles. Even the most sterile and refined surgical instruments still contained too much iron for her to withstand without slight reaction.

Sheptilah kept up a humorous conversation with the various doctors. She was not a shy woman so she did not fight back against them when they poked and prodded her and asked her ridiculous questions about her family history. They determined she was indeed in her early thirties by her dental records and fully-fused skull.

She thought the x-rays were truly a novelty. Being able to see inside someone without cutting them open was on par with magic, in her opinion.

The whole time Shadow was sizing up the witch he came to understand she always started her conversations with compliments that may or may not have been sincere to lower the guard of whomever she was meeting. She often made jokes to be friendly and get people to trust her. She was manipulative and he was surprised at Rouge trusting her so quickly.

All in all, his opinion was that he figured she was a mild threat at best and he was secretly glad it wasn't him getting poked and prodded for once.

The doctor directed Tilly to sit up as she was done with the exam. The witch poofed her sweats back on and stood up. She thanked the doctor and was escorted again by Rouge and Shadow to Abraham's office.

Sheptilah assured Tower that she told him all she knew but would need to gather supplies to build up an apothecary and find her family's royal grimoire. In it would be the instructions to recreate the weapon.

"Would the Chaos Emeralds help?" He asked her.

"I do not know what that is…" She raised an eyebrow. Such a concept never reached her people.

"Magical gemstones, seven of them, that contain infinite power when put together." Shadow nodded. "The Master Emerald controls the other seven."

"I don't remember the exact recipe for making the staff but it certainly didn't call for any strange minerals other than a specific kind of pearl." Sheptilah shrugged. "The grimoire has the whole list."

"Where is the book?" Tower was typing away on his laptop looking for any information on the ancient grimoire.

"The ziggurat, most likely-" she paused. "Honestly I'd like to go back to the island now. I have things I need to do first. Just summon me if you need me. At the moment I have to go convince my 'guardian' to behave long enough to help me. After this is all over you can do what you want with him. I'm told he's a real asshole."

Abraham mulled over the options. He determined that Sheptilah was not GUN material but would still need her to fight off the new threat.

"We can always bring her back here if need be." Rouge reminded Abraham.

"Fine," he gave in, "gather the things you need. We will be watching you, Sheptilah."


	6. Virtual Insanity

Sheptilah was escorted from the building by armed guards. She teleported away from them immediately after stepping outside. Concentrating on the hulking steel door to the lair,she appeared and landed softly on the ground.

It was warm and bright on the island which was a welcome change from the dark and damp mountain fortress. The sun was starting to set on the horizon making the sky a rainbow of colors. She knocked on the metal door as politely as possible.

The computer console in Eggman's office lit up, showing the woman standing outside on the surveillance cameras.

"Oh!" He hopped up immediately and ran to the door to let her in after confirming she was alone. "Sheptilah!" He greeted her with his best used car salesman smile. Orbot and Cubot stood behind him waving.

She maintained a neutral expression and went inside. She was angry with what he did but opted to show mercy since nobody could have known that blowing up the moon would result in a deadly species coming back to Mobius.

"Why were you at GUN?" He asked as he followed behind her.

She made a beeline for that heavenly sofa. She immediately flopped down on it and stretched out.

Ivo sat on the far end. Orbot and Cubot came into the room to observe.

"I was a person of interest. A cute bat and a grumpy hedgehog had me go with them. The doctors there gave me something called a 'vack-sheen'."

"They just forced vaccines on you like a dog?" He mumbled to himself. "Why didn't I think of that? I completely forgot about modern diseases..." He scratched his chin in thought. Damn, I could've instilled a healthy fear of modern illness in her to keep her ass in place but I completely forgot with her healing factor...

  
"Ivo?"

"Oh right, was lost in thought just now. You mean you met Rouge and Shadow? Wait… you didn't join GUN, did you?"

"No. They didn't even ask."

  
Ivo breathed a sigh of relief. Sheptilah sat with her legs crossed and turned to face him.

"I don't think they even like me. I slept in a prison cell then was treated with hostility by the man who runs the whole thing."

  
"Prison cell?" He raised his eyebrows and frowned. "Well..." He relaxed his expression, "that actually sounds a lot like something GUN would do."

"Hey, boss," Orbot waved to get his attention, "it's dinner time. We only set one place, though."

"Well go and set another, you idiot!" Eggman shook his fist at the little red robot. Orbot rolled his eyes and went to the dining room to set out a second plate.

"Why are you so mean to your creations?" Sheptilah squinted at him. She had no idea what the robot was saying but still thought Eggman's reaction was unwarranted.

"Because they should know better but continue to disappoint me." He stood. "It's time to eat. Follow me."

He led her to a dining room with a massive table that ran the entire length of the room with chairs on both sides. Two plates with a salad on both sat across from each other were meant for Sheptilah and Eggman. He directed her to sit and invited her to begin eating. She gratefully ate everything as she had not actually been given food at GUN Sheptilah was delighted to see that forks were still en vogue in the far future.

"How did you know I do not eat meat?" She swallowed. "Mmm! I love that tomatoes are still the same flavor."

"The salad is the appetizer." Honestly he wished his robots would stop trying to get him to eat healthier.

"What's an appetizer?" She spoke while chewing, something he found a bit endearing.

"The food before you eat the real meal." He was picking at his plate, mostly moving the bits of greenery around with his fork.

"So, Doctor Eggman," she ate the last leaf off of her plate, "I'm told you're an evil dictator who murders Mobians for fun by turning them into robots and you blew up the moon."

He nearly choked on what little food he had in his mouth. He coughed a bit before swallowing and clearing his throat.

"Who told you that!?" His face flushed red.

"The Mobians." She rested her elbows on the table and her chin on her knuckles.

"That was years ago!" He tried to cover for himself. "I de-roboticized them; they're organic again. They were never killed. Well, a few are still robots."

"Why?"

"Because they were so old and sick when they were roboticized that making them flesh and blood again would kill them almost instantly."

She glowered, looking at him closely. After a moment of silence her expression softened. "Why did you destroy our moon?"

"It's complicated, Sheptilah."

"You held the moon hostage! You threatened to blow up Mobius if you couldn't get your way. I want you to know what you released when you destroyed it." She showed him the same thing she showed Team Dark and Abraham Tower: the same images of destruction and devastation played out with smoke. "You did this, Ivo. You did this and you need to help me fix it."

He accidentally released a world-ending entity. Again.

"Why should I help? I don't owe anyone anything."

"I assume you don't want to die, that's why. You can't rule over a kingdom with a population of zero."

"And why would I die? I have plenty of ways to defend myself. I have bunkers on other planets, Sheptilah. I am an extremely wealthy and intelligent man."

"You could be a hero." She cupped her hands and showed a magically projected image of Eggman beloved by all, surrounded by confetti.

"So what? I don't want to be a hero; I want to be king of the Universe."

"My people were like gods when we worked together. We could move stars. We could raise entire continents out of the sea. The creatures killed almost all of us and it only took a few generations to do it." The image of Ivo disappeared and was replaced with dead bodies.

Eggman's stomach churned at the images appearing in her hands. He definitely wasn't going to finish eating dinner.

"Clearly we are all going to die and I am wasting time by arguing with you when I could be hightailing it out of here."

He had a point.

"You have great resources and I will need every possible one I can get my hands on. Please. You will have nothing to rule if you do not assist."

Still he refused.

"I was hoping you would willingly want to help. You won't be able to leave. You're bound to me." The magical images disappeared and she laid her palms on the table.

"Bound to you?"

"Yes, you woke me up, so you're magically bound to me. It started the second you touched the reliquary. You're my guardian in this future and I don't like it, either."

She explained as succinctly as possible what it meant. They were stuck with each other because of the nature of the spell: her people wanted to guarantee their queen would be protected if she was awoken and that meant that if they were too far apart for too long it would make him sick and possibly kill him.

"Didn't you feel that something was missing the whole time I was gone?"

"How do I break this bond?" He avoided the question. It's true that in her absence he felt lonely again but told himself he was mostly worried that he would have to deal with GUN's forces.

"I don't know. That would be in the family grimoire. If you want me to sever the bond I will need to get that book. It's also how I will create the weapon my family passed down, but I will have to improve on the design because the first one obviously failed."

"And where is this book?"

"The ziggurat. It should be near where you found me. It's a giant structure in the desert. You honestly cannot miss the damned thing."

Orbot came into the room in a rush. "Sir! There's a distress call coming from Thunderbolt the chinchilla. Her base is under attack!"

Eggman ran from the dining room with Sheptilah following behind him to his office and brought up the Eggnet webcams to look at the live surveillance from Thunderbolt's lair in Soumerca. His heart pounded in his chest- nothing should be happening in Soumerca since the crisis involving Dark Gaia was resolved over a year prior. After the world was reformed he dissolved most of his Egg Bosses throughout Mobius and opted to keep Soumerca and the Deep Blue Realm as the most active and populated bases. The rest were merely fronts with less than a hundred workers in each. The rest were all but shut down.

He swapped between cameras showing empty rooms that were absolutely trashed. Deep claw marks in the thick steel walls sent a chill down his spine. Many of the images were unsteady and came in and out of focus. Others were pure static.

"Where is everyone?" He whispered as he tabbed through cameras and stopped when he saw the main foyer was filled with destroyed robots and a few bodies of workers. Bloody hand and paw prints were smudged across keyboards and computer screens.

"What is this?" Sheptilah was horrified. "Is this one of your buildings?"

"Incoming message…" The computer spoke as it brought up another live feed, this time from Thunderbolt's communicator. The image was dark and he could barely make out where it was coming from. He flipped through other cameras and saw something that seemed unable to contain its shape was tearing apart robots.

It was white and pink and sliding around as if it was made of goo. With each bit of living material it consumed it grew slightly larger.

"Lord Eggman! Lord Eggman!" He heard Thunderbolt's voice gurgle like she had water in her lungs. "Something is here and…-" Her transmission was cutting out.

"Thunderbolt? Thunderbolt what's happening?" He panicked. He would have to go rescue her himself since he had no other militants near the area capable of doing so.

"Some weird creature…" Thunderbolt coughed. "I'm hiding in a pipe, I think. I'm gravely wounded."

"That's one of the witch-eaters!" Sheptilah pointed to the screen. "Look at it! You have to take me there. I can save them from it! There's only one, I can do this."

"It sounds like she's not gonna make it. I'm not going down there." Eggman shook his head. Thunderbolt heard what he said and wheezed.

"Lord Eggman, please…" Thunderbolt begged him.

"We won't be able to get there in time," he told both women, "It's so far away and I don't have nearly enough robots to fight back."

"Call GUN! Something!" Sheptilah took grabbed Eggman's wrist. "I can warp you there. Just show me a map of the area and I can get us there."

"But you couldn't possibly warp us there in a warship. The steel it's made out of would hinder you, right?"

Eggman paused for a moment and then nodded. He brought up his gauntlet to his mouth and hailed GUN's president to ask for assistance.

  
\-------------------------------------- ☀ --------------------------------------

  
"I can't believe I missed out on seeing Rouge!" Knuckles was sobbing into his cheeseburger at Meh Burger's food court. Tails, Amy, Sonic and Sticks were with him. They all went out for dinner as a group often.

Amy lightly patted him on the shoulder. "She'll be back."

"I'm more concerned about that Overlander, you say she's at GUN now? I trust her even less!" Sticks slammed her fist on the table causing their drinks to almost tip over.

“The Guardian Unit of Nations are the good guys now, Sticks." Tails tried to explain it.

"No government agency is to be trusted!" Sticks was all fired up, "I _especially_ do not trust those sneaks at the post office! There's brain-melting chemicals in the stamps they make you lick."

"There's more to the story though, isn't there?" Tails looked worried. He was ripping his napkin into tiny pieces.

"To the post office? Yes! Stay put I am gonna go get my evide-"

"No, Sticks," Tails cut her off, "more to the story with… what was her name, Sheptilah?"

Sonic was holding the witch orb in his hand and staring at it. No matter what direction he turned it the swirl in the center did not move or change angles.

"She said some race of creatures attacked and ate her kind and that she has to fight them off and that Doctor Eggman, of all people, rescued her." The blue hedgehog bit his lip in thought.

"Oh great, another threat." Tails sighed, "What did they look like? I can do a search to see if anything has happened."

"They're shape shifters." Amy watched Sonic play with the marble.

"Of course." Tails was already regretting having gotten out of bed today.

"So it could be anyone… even me!" Sticks looked around at everyone suspiciously. "If I start acting like a cannibal you have my permission to kill me."

"Yeah! You have my permission to kill Sticks!" Knuckles spoke up. "Wait! Don't kill my friend!"

Tails opened his weather worn laptop and started doing searches for news of cannibalistic activity or shape shifter reports. He found a few articles but was disappointed to see most of them were from tabloid newspapers that made their money being clickbait.

Sonic's phone chimed. He got a text from Rouge explaining that Sheptilah was back at the lair and with Doctor Eggman.

"The witch is back." Sonic said.

"We should go and talk to her and Eggman then, shouldn't we?" Tails asked.

"I don't know if he's going to cooperate," Amy sighed, "but it's worth a shot, right?"

The group threw away their trash and made their way to Eggman's lair. Just as they landed on the volcanic outcrop they saw the Doctor holding a massive laser gun and the witch with her book in hand run out the entrance in a huff with Orbot and Cubot nowhere in sight.

Sheptilah began to open a small portal to transport her and Doctor Eggman to the Soumerca base. It appeared in front of them first as a pinpoint but gradually opened up to the size of a door.

"You kids again!" Sheptilah said out of breath. "You need to leave!"

"What's going on?!" Sonic demanded.

"Don't worry about it!" Eggman yelled. "Just stay out of it." The portal opened all the way revealing the base's entrance at the other side. Eggman was the first to jump through.

"Oh no, I'm going with you!" Sonic ran through before Sheptilah could even blink.

"Are you kids coming, too?" She looked exasperated.

"Yes!" they all shouted in unison.

"Then go on in quickly! I can't keep the portal open for long."

They all ran in one by one except for Sticks who was pulled in by Amy. Sheptilah jumped through and closed the portal behind her.

  
\-------------------------------------- ☽ ☾ --------------------------------------

Shadow was relaxing with Hope and Omega on a sofa in the communal area of the fortress where the agents could unwind and socialize. They were watching a documentary together about the history of robotics and enjoying each other's company.

Rouge herself was about to get into a nice bubble bath with a good book when the call came in.

"Team Dark to the armed hangar. I repeat, Team Dark to the armed hangar." That was Cabbot's voice over the intercoms.

The group made their way quickly to the hangar where GUN kept their armed fleet. Cabbot was waiting there for them with a small plane ready to go.

"You're being deployed to Soumerca immediately. There has been activity there and Doctor Eggman and the witch woman has called for help." Boris spoke calmly.

"What's going on?" Shadow asked, he had Hope standing behind him. Cabbot handed Hope a headset and a laptop so she could listen in and monitor the trio while they were deployed. The ship's back opened to let Omega load in.

"One of those witch-eaters has appeared and is ransacking Eggman's Soumerca base. Sheptilah and Eggman are going to meet us there."

"Finally. I get to fight." Omega spoke in his tinny voice.

"I have no idea what's going on," Hope shook her head, "but you have my support."

"I'll explain everything after they take off." Cabbot nodded at the girl. "For now you should go to my office."

Rouge herself loaded into the cockpit of the ship and Shadow sat shotgun. He gave Hope a thumbs up.

"Hope, can you hear me?" Rouge spoke into her communicator on her wrist while she was powering up the plane. Cabbot and Hope left the hangar so the plane could take off.

"Loud and clear!" She responded, "all systems on the plane are appearing as OK to go."

"Let's go, then," Shadow spoke into his communicator, "we'll finish the movie when we get back, Hope."

"I can't believe you talked me into th- ack!" Eggman found himself squashed by Sonic, Knuckles and Amy who also fell out of the portal. Sticks landed on her feet and Tails flew above the pile of furries.

"Why'd you kids have to come!?" Eggman shouted as he stood up, "this is definitely no place for you!"

Sonic helped Amy up.

"What's going on?" Knuckles asked.

"Stay out here, please," Sheptilah begged, "Eggman and I are going inside to fight one of those shape shifters I told you about last night. GUN's coming to help." The witch tucked her grimoire away in her hair and it disappeared much in the same way Amy's Piko Piko hammer could vanish.

"How many are in there?" Sonic looked around at the carnage. It looked like something burned a trail into the ground leading to the entrance. Robot parts and what looked like ripped clothing was strewn about but it was deadly silent.

The GUN Ship came into view. It appeared through the use of a giant warp ring and floated above them. The sudden displacement of air nearly blew everyone over.

Shadow, Rouge and Omega all bailed out of the ship but left it levitating in the air so that it couldn't be easily hijacked. Rouge landed gracefully, Omega landed with a massive thud and Shadow simply appeared.

"Who is the big guy?" Sheptilah asked.

"Omega. He's one of our robots." Shadow explained.

"I did not understand the woman's words," Omega said, "but I do understand we have to kill things, and that is my primary language."

The gigantic base was on lock-down. Eggman went up to the console and was trying to get into the base by overriding the security settings. The bulk of the computers inside the base were all destroyed and he couldn't get them remotely turned on or restarted.

"Let me try-" Tails began to say but was interrupted.

"Move!" Knuckles pushed Eggman aside and punched the console as hard as he could. It shattered into pieces and sparked- but it got the job done. The hulking doors slid open and out wafted the stench of decomposition from a long, dark hallway.

"Holy _shit_." Was all Eggman could say.

"I need all of you to stay out here. Rouge, Omega and I are going in to stop the beast." Shadow directed them. Rouge and Knuckles choked on the fetid air and moved away from the door.

"No way," Sonic defied Shadow at any chance he could, "I'm going with you." He pulled his brown bandana over his nose to keep from choking on the smell of death.

Eggman turned his laser gun on and it emitted a high pitched whine.

"Those creatures are really hard to defeat with magic, even harder with brute force. I'm going to go rescue any survivors. Shadow, Rouge and Omega please do what you can to fight off the monster. Summon me with the witch orb if you can't defeat it. It's a small one but the more it eats the bigger it gets.

"Sonic, you can come with me and Doctor Eggman as part of a rescue mission. The rest of you stay out here and let us know if you see anything, okay?" Sheptilah used magic to shorten her hair to a chin-length bob.

"Yes, ma'am." Tails said.

"Sounds good to me, too." Rouge nodded.

"I'm not arguing." Knuckles gagged.

  
"Sonic, be careful." Amy begged. Sonic winked to reassure her.

"Orbot, Cubot, do you read me?" Eggman spoke into his gauntlet. The two lackeys were back at the lair manning the console.

"Loud and clear, boss!" Cubot chimed.

"Orbot, I want you to do a search for survivors and broadcast it to me on the map." Eggman brought up the map of the base on his gauntlet and sent copies to Omega wirelessly.

"Well, it's moving but it looks like it's back in the industrial wing," Cubot sounded nervous, "where the bombs are stored."

"Let's go, then! As fast as we can!" Sheptilah ran in the entrance.

"You said the magic words!" Sonic sped ahead of her in a blue flash.


	7. Devil's Den

Shadow, Omega and Rouge teleported to the beast’s location via Chaos Control.

The massive wing was lined with shelves overflowing with brightly colored warheads of varying sizes. Safety slogans plastered over Eggman's smiling logo hung on the walls.

**LOOSE LIPS SINK WARSHIPS**

**NO EATING OR DRINKING PERMITTED**

**DO NOT PLAY ON OR AROUND THE AMMUNITION**

Lights flickered overhead making it extremely difficult to spot the monster whose size kept fluctuating from the size of a loaf of bread to the height of the ceiling. It left a slimy, winding trail of congealed blood and crude oil that slightly dissolved the metal floor.

The trio could see that the creature had no eyes or mouth and yet despite this it still seemed fully capable of eating and, aside from a strange sloshing noise whenever it changed shape, navigating its surroundings with an unnerving silence. Regardless, it struggled to maintain a form for any prolonged period and regularly shifted its appearance between that of the various robots and Mobians stationed around the base.

It seemed to be inspecting the weapons, unsure of what they were.

Omega connected to the base’s computer server and scanned the bombs.

"No firearms," Omega chirped as he withdrew his massive guns, "every bomb in this room is petrol-based and armed. None are nuclear. According to the data, this place has been under siege for five days. The first thing the beast did was cut every method of communication before trapping the workers inside."

"Great," Rouge groaned, "so it's smart. We have to lead it out of this room or we're all going to be jelly."

"I will be fine." Omega said flatly.

"The witch said brute force doesn't work on these things… I wonder if Chaos energy is effective." Shadow warped directly in front of the beast and quickly prepared to unleash a Chaos Spear aimed at the center of its mass. However, just before Shadow could unleash the crackling bolt of energy the monster roared and dashed out of the way towards Rouge.

The bat deftly took to the air to avoid the beast’s lunge before countering with her trademark Screw Kick, rapidly spiraling downward to unleash a series of kicks upon her amorphous target. The beast narrowly avoids Rouge’s fury by splitting itself in two, both halves now targeting Omega.

The hulking robot attempted to grab both halves of the creature but it simply dribbled through his hands before doubling back to strike at Rouge once again. Shadow intercepted the attack by teleporting in front of Rouge and unleashing another Chaos Spear, nearly missing his target despite their proximity. The golden electricity crackled audibly as it coursed through the gooey monster, leaving the distinctive smell of ozone behind.

The creature howled in pain and tried to get away but to no avail. Shadow shot it again and again with Chaos energy until it finally collapsed into a disgusting puddle of slime.

Omega examined himself and noticed superficial damage where he made contact with the beast. "Eggman, the threat is neutralized."

"Omega? Is the beast actually dead?" Doctor Eggman spoke from his gauntlet to the robot.

Omega picked up the tiniest of movements from the creature's remains. It slowly inched toward Shadow's shoes and began to eat away at the metal soles.

"Down, Shadow!" Omega instinctively fired a small rocket at it to protect his comrade. The beast, however, dodged the projectile, causing it to ricochet off the adjacent wall and hit one of the smaller bombs. The resulting explosion was relatively small but still managed to set off a chain reaction detonating one bomb after next and setting off the sprinkler system above which tried to douse the fire to no avail.”

"Omega!" Rouge shouted. "This whole place is gonna blow!"

" _Seriously?!_ " Shadow was incensed by the robot's recklessness.

"I calculated perfectly and I did not strike you with my attack." Omega said.

"But you hit everything else!" Shadow scolded.

"We're reading a massive temperature spike in your area." Hope shouted into her headset. The ship was scanning the base and feeding the data back to her computers, "What's going on down there?"

"Technical difficulties," Omega responded as Team Dark fled the armory, "Target is neutralized. Scanning for survivors now… puny Orbot reports that there is a cluster of people in the lowest level."

The trio had left the creature in the room to burn to death. More and more bombs started going off, shaking the premises.

"You two go find the others and get the _hell_ out of here. I'm going to grab the survivors." Shadow teleported to the basement and found dozens of weakened Egg Army soldiers crowded behind a barricaded door. They were all emaciated from being trapped there for days. He grabbed them five at a time and deposited them outside where Sonic's friends were waiting.

\-------------------------------------- ✫ -------------------------------------- 

Sonic skipped over junked robots and zigzagged between bodies checking for signs of life in those that seemed less obviously decayed. While sifting through bodies, the hedgehog thought he heard something move and ran to the uniformed body of a cat Mobian. "I got ya buddy!" He bent down, gently rolled the body over. "Help's arrived, we're gonna get ya all fixed up-" It no longer had a face- just exposed bone. Sonic shrieked, startling both Eggman and Sheptilah.

Just one survivor was all Sonic wanted to find. _One._

The hedgehog backed up against the wall and shut his eyes. He took several shuddering breaths before he regained his composure, or so he thought.

Eggman struggled to keep up the pace while simultaneously not tripping on debris. “Sonic?” He turned to it and winced.

“I thought they were alive,” Sonic’s forehead was damp with sweat, “I thought they were alive… I’ve never seen a person like that before.”

Sheptilah gently cupped his cheeks with her hands. “It’s okay,” she stroked his face with her thumbs, “you’re okay. There’s nothing you can do for a dead body. It’s okay. A dead body can’t hurt you.”

“I know but...” Sonic inhaled deeply and exhaled slowly. “I thought they were alive and… ugh.”

“Yeah.” Tilly said sympathetically. “The witch-eaters do that. I can send you back home if you can’t do this.”

“I can do this! I have to do this. I just got spooked, that’s all.” Sonic’s breath hitched trying to stifle sobs. Normally he wouldn’t dare allow anyone, especially Eggman, see him so shaken but in this extreme situation there was no shame in it.

Ivo groaned and looked upon the hedgehog with pity. “Shake it off, Sonic! We’re on a time limit here.”

Sheptilah shot him a glare while Sonic looked up at the Overlander with wide, exhausted eyes.

“He’s just a kid, you jerk.” She flashed a fang.

“What? We have a mission to do.” Ivo shrugged.

“He’s right; we have living people to save.” Sonic swallowed hard and lifted himself from the wall. He shook off the tension, making his needles rattle against themselves.

Eggman gave Sonic directions. "Go straight and then take a left down that hallway; that's where Thunderbolt's vent is according to Orbot's map. Take Sheptilah with you."

"How am I supposed to keep up wi- AH!" Sheptilah’s protesting was interrupted by a shrill cry when Sonic simply picked her up and ran with her in his arms as per Eggman's instructions. "You are a lot brawnier than you look, kid!"

"I'm just full of surprises!" He turned to find a door that was shut and set Sheptilah down on her feet.

She took a moment to recover from dizziness. "How are we getting in?" Sheptilah felt around the wall for a key or a button that would let them in.

“Watch it." Sonic nudged her out of the way before curling into a tight sphere and Spin Dashing through the door, punching a small jagged hole in the thin metal. He unfurled on the other side and motioned for Sheptilah to join him. With some reluctance, the woman obliged and, unsurprisingly, nicked her arm on sharp metal on her way through the opening. Though the cut itself was relatively minor, her allergy to metal made the pain a sharp, searing one that shot through her entire arm.

“Thunderbolt?" Sonic called, "Thunderbolt!?" It was a small room meant to store office supplies. Many of the boxes were turned over, revealing their mundane contents. A makeshift set of stairs made from a haphazardly overturned pile of crates led up to a vent in the corner. Small, bloody hand prints showed that someone of Thunderbolt’s size climbed them not that long ago.

Sonic jumped up and ripped the vent cover off the wall. It was a tight squeeze but he was able to flatten his spines enough to fit in.

"Is she in there?" Sheptilah called. She took off the glamour hiding her absurdly long hair in preparation of healing the wounded Mobian.

"There's a blood trail, it leads further down. I think I can hear her breathing." Sonic was crawling on his elbows and knees now and squinting in the darkness.

"S-Sonic?" A very quiet voice spoke. "I'm here."

It was almost heartbreaking for Sonic to hear the very feisty chinchilla barely able to even whisper. Then again, she did try to kill him and his friends a few times, so maybe she deserved this.

 _No,_ he shook the thought from his mind, _nobody deserves this._

"I'm coming!" Sonic turned a corner and found Thunderbolt lying on her back. Her cybernetics were destroyed and her normally soft, fluffy fur was filthy. Her mouth and nose were leaking a slightly pink foam; she was definitely drowning in her own blood. Slowly.

" _Damn it_ ," she wheezed, "Why you?"

Sonic looked down at her and saw she had a proportionately deep cut in her torso.

"God, oh God, oh God..." He started to panic. He spoke into his wrist communicator hailing for his friends waiting outside. "Guys?"

"Sonic!" They all shouted in unison.

"Wh- what do I do if someone… Is very hurt?" His voice shook with uncertainty.

"What?" Amy's face contorted with horror. "Who is hurt?"

"It's Thunderbolt." He swallowed hard.

"How badly?" Sticks spoke. Her years in the jungle made her somewhat of an expert in on-the-fly medical care.

"Just… I see a bit of bone; maybe a rib? It's across her torso."

"T- tie your bandana around her torso and carry her to the witch." Tails tried to be as calm as possible but his voice wavered.

"Okay… okay." He took off his bandana and gingerly but tightly tied it around Thunderbolt's stomach. She cried out and cursed his name, the agony made worse by the movement. "I'm gonna pick you up, okay? I am getting you out of here, T.B."

"Sonic?" Sheptilah's voice echoed, "Are you okay?"

"She's alive! I'm coming." He called back to her.

"Don't touch me," Thunderbolt spat, "I'm proud to die for Eggman." She coughed weakly between words.

"He's here; he came for _you_." He gently tucked her in his arm and prepared to turn around to crawl back to Sheptilah.

"Take me to him." She shut her eyes and welcomed death. She would never admit it but she was grateful to be laying against Sonic's soft fur after spending hours in a cold vent.

Sonic tried to turn around but found he couldn't. Not only was he simply too tall to turn but his barbs also wouldn't let him crawl backwards out of the vent. He tried to push backwards regardless but the sheer agony of his spines being pulled out of their roots was like fire burning each and every nerve ending he had.

"Sheptilah, I'm stuck! I have to keep crawling forward. Meet me at the other opening."

"Where?" She was more lost than he was.

"Just follow my voice!" Sonic crawled forward, holding onto Thunderbolt tightly. He could see light coming in from a nearby grate and moved as quickly as he could toward it. His sensitive nose also picked up the faint smell of bleach.

Eggman finally caught up to Sheptilah and helped her out of the hole Sonic cut in the door. The whole building rattled and she fell into his arms.

"What was that?" Eggman spoke into his gauntlet.

"I set off some bombs." Omega responded banally.

"The creature is neutralized. I'm collecting survivors now. Some were hiding in a basement, it's about thirty people." Shadow's voice was almost a comfort to Eggman, "but the bombs are still going off. You need to get out _now_."

"Sonic's got Thunderbolt and he's moving forward to the next vent opening. Where is that?" The witch's hands were shaking.

"This way." He led her to the next room down the long hallway which was a public unisex bathroom. The walls were tiled a pristine white and the floors were shiny and black with inlaid specks of glitter. It was like walking on outer space itself.

There was no door to this room- instead, zigzagging partitions offered privacy when entering.

Sonic found himself in a vent just m above the sinks. He slid his fingers through slits in the grate and pushed but couldn't get the leverage to force it open. "I can't get it open!" The hedgehog shouted.

"Stop yelling! I see you. Hold on." Eggman leaned his gun against the wall, reached up and ripped the cover off almost effortlessly. He threw the grate down with a metallic clang that hurt Sheptilah’s ears.

He held his hand up so he could take Thunderbolt and so Sonic could get out. Eggman handed off the chinchilla to Sheptilah who looked over the little yellow puff with pity.

"Eggman, I am never going to complain about fighting your robots again." Sonic stuck his head out and was trying to figure out how to get down without hurting the chinchilla.

Ivo grabbed the hedgehog by the underarms, pulled him out and gently set him down on the floor. Sonic threw the human a thumbs-up as thanks.

Sheptilah tenderly wrapped her hair around Thunderbolt's tiny body and concentrated. It's one thing to heal little cuts but it's another to repair entire organs. The chinchilla shivered from the ice cold sensation of the magic and opened her eyes. When things came into focus she saw the violet-eyed woman staring down at her with her lips in a thin frown.

"Am I dead?" Thunderbolt wondered. "This doesn't look like Hell…"

"Thunderbolt?" Eggman gently poked the little rodent on the forehead.

" _Am I in heaven?"_ The chinchilla's face flushed until she saw Sonic. "Never mind, I'm alive."

"You gave us a scare," the blue hedgehog put a hand on Sheptilah's shoulder, "this witch saved you." The building rumbled again, this time it was louder.

"Is she related to Regina?" Thunderbolt thought about the techno witch and former Iron Queen, wondering if she had siblings. She squirmed in Tilly's arms when another rumble shook the walls.

"No, I'll explain later." Eggman said. "It's time to go."

"What's the fastest way out of here?" Sonic anxiously bounced on the balls of his feet. They were deep inside the building and the rumbling quakes were now so intense that it nearly knocked them over.

"I hear voices." Rouge spoke from outside and poked her head into the bathroom. "Hey!"

"Rouge!" Tilly smiled. "You're okay!"

"I'm tough as diamonds, sweetheart." She winked.

Omega led them out of the base through the most direct route which incidentally was blowing a giant hole through the walls with Eggman's laser gun. Even the thickest steel walls melted away like butter under its blasts. Omega silently made a note to steal that gun for himself when the doctor wasn't looking.

Exhaustion washed over Eggman's tired and somewhat out-of-shape body. With every labored breath his muscles burned. Tilly took his hand and gave him a magical boost so he wouldn't collapse. Energy shot through him, lighting his nerves with a burst of vitality.

Thunderbolt was scandalized that some barely dressed _hussy_ touched her beloved overlord. However, rather than causing a scene, the ferocious chinchilla decided that she'd hold on to that anger for when she could properly exact revenge.

With the final group of stragglers now accounted for, everyone who wasn't dead or destroyed was out of the building. Sheptilah set Thunderbolt down and began to tend to the survivors who were grateful that a rescue came at all. The ends of her hair were stained pink and red from all of the wounds she healed with it.

Sonic's friends immediately pulled him into a hug, very much relieved that he was okay. Amy peppered his cheeks with kisses.

All of his emotions poured out and he began to cry from relief. His tears caused his friends to sob in return and soon they were all a pile of wet eyes, choked laughs and pained smiles.

"Don't cry, Sonic." Shadow approached the group. "You did well today." Shadow's praises made Sonic sob harder but the ebony hedgehog couldn't understand why.

"Get in here, buddy!" With a swipe of Knuckles' muscular arm, Shadow was drawn into the hug and loved against his will.

"Ack! Knuckles!" Sonic cried out. "We love you too, man, but you are making it hard to breathe!"

Rouge giggled and snapped a photo of this to tease Shadow with from now until the heat death of the Universe.

Knuckles felt satisfied and let them all go. He approached Rouge to talk but chickened out, pretending he intended to walk past her and circle back to Tails to discuss how they were getting home.

The fox went up to Sheptilah and sheepishly asked her if she could open up another portal to let them go home.

"Absolutely," she looked around, "I just need to find a quiet place to do it."

Thunderbolt looked on at the commotion with hatred in her heart. How dare Eggman threaten to leave her to die and how dare he send Sonic and some woman to save her? She was disgusted and humiliated. She took off Sonic's bandanna and threw it on the ground, digging her heel into it.

Eggman saw this and approached the chinchilla. "Omega told me that you survived in there with that thing for five days," Eggman looked down at the angry Mobian, "You're an excellent addition to my army."

All of her ire instantly melted away. "Really?"

Eggman nodded. Thunderbolt nearly jumped three feet into the air from excitement.

"President Tower is sending emergency vehicles to pick up the survivors," Hope spoke with relief in her voice, "he wants everyone moving as far away from the building as possible."

"Understood," Rouge said, "anything else?"

"He wants you to bring Sheptilah, Thunderbolt and Eggman back with you for questioning." Hope remotely lowered the plane so that Omega could board.

"Do you want Sonic, too? He helped us directly." Rouge asked.

"Hold on…" A pause and then: "Tower says yes."

"Team Dark, you're ordered to come back to base with Doctor Eggman, Thunderbolt, Sheptilah and Sonic immediately." President Tower spoke into their communicators.

Just then, a deployment of GUN vehicles arrived via an overhead warp ring. The displacement of air was greater this time and sent the bulk of everyone standing on the ground below flying back a few feet.

Shadow and Rouge escorted Eggman and Thunderbolt onto the plane first. Shadow immediately confiscated the laser gun and handed it to Omega for safekeeping; if the robot could smile he would’ve grinned from ear to ear. What a great day!

Rouge exited the plane and beckoned to those that remained of their entourage in an attempt to get them on board as well.

Eggman sat with Thunderbolt in his arms and she couldn't have been any happier. She was almost _purring_.

"Wait, hold on." Sheptilah had trouble lifting her wounded arm but managed to open a small portal for the Mobians to return to Seaside Island.

"Thank you, miss!" Tails said as he hopped in. He was followed by Amy, Sticks and Knuckles after they said their goodbyes to Sonic.

"Don't let them make you lick any stamps." Sticks warned.

Sheptilah closed the portal and nodded to Rouge, ready to return to GUN’s fortress.


	8. Fake Happy

Eggman and Thunderbolt were corralled into separate, heavily guarded rooms while Sonic and Sheptilah were jointly interrogated by Boris Cabbot.

The rooms were small and contained only a table and a few uncomfortable chairs. Oppressively bright fluorescent lighting beamed down from above, making it hard to focus.

There was nothing Sonic could tell them that they did not already know through Team Dark. He stared at his filthy gloves while speaking non-stop so that he wouldn't have to keep images of the corpses out of his mind.

Thunderbolt absolutely _refused_ to divulge any information to GUN out of loyalty to Eggman. She stood on the table and threatened to attack anyone who came near her.

President Tower just stared daggers into the tiny rodent. He was not afraid of her and did not take her threats seriously knowing that her cybernetic weaponry was disabled. He turned to the guard and asked them to bring in Eggman.

The nervous Overlander was brought in with cuffed hands raised high. High caliber weaponry was pressed into his back.

"I don't appreciate being forced to play musical chairs right now." He complained, then understood when he saw Thunderbolt.

"Sit, Doctor." Tower directed him.

"I prefer to _stand_."

"Very well. Your underling refuses to discuss what she saw." Tower sat back down in the interrogator's chair.

"T.B., just tell them what happened." The mustached doctor urged her from the corner.

The yellow chinchilla growled and finally gave in.

"We did not know anything was wrong until it was too late," she began, "whatever it was it snuck in on one of our robots. It did something to our computers and jammed all of our signals and instantly locked us in." Thunderbolt's ears and tail twitched with agitation. Her eyes darted between Eggman's and Tower's.

"We fought _hard_ to get ourselves out of the base; nobody was answering our distress. Eventually, after three days, we found out that it was because of some monster attacking us one by one. After that, we followed safety protocol and made our way to the lowest point of the building. _Several_ of us attempted to fight it off but it just kept changing."

She paused to catch her breath.

"That thing ate through my mecha. It learned to dodge and it learned to attack the organics and not the robots. _It sliced me open with a piece of metal!_ "

The chinchilla huffed. "I held myself together, literally, and ran. I ran for the glory of the Eggman Empire! I found a vent to crawl in and waited it out. I didn't even feel pain. I felt nothing." She fibbed for the last part and Eggman knew it, but let it slide.

"How did you get communications back up?" Tower stared intently at her bright green eyes.

Thunderbolt turned to him and hissed. "There was a brief power outage before the emergency generators came on. In that time, I was able to get a message out."

\-------------------------------------- ✫ -------------------------------------

Sonic, Cabbot and Team Dark were in the media room watching footage from the battle lifted from both Omega and the Eggnet with Sheptilah there to offer her insights. Cabbot seemed to have his eyes fixed on the woman the entire time.

Sheptilah tried her hardest to look at the screen but had to look away from the carnage every so often. She didn't understand any of what was happening. Was she wrong? Did she remember it incorrectly? _The creatures were never able to eat through metal,_ she kept telling herself, _that's why we sealed it in the core of the moon. The iron core._

Hope scanned through the various files on her laptop with a coffee in hand and a furrowed brow.

"With Eggman's Soumercian base now a smoking crater, we have no way of actually getting a sample of the beast. Without samples, it's impossible to scan for the life form."

"What about the corrosion on Omega? Surely there's _something_ still stuck in the damage." Shadow asked.

"The parts of Omega that it touched didn't leave any residue, just damage to his chassis." Hope looked exhausted as she spoke to the group and took another sip of her drink.

It was so much to take in- she had just learned about the witch and the moon. Sonic and his friends had _just_ sealed Dark Gaia in the core of the planet. Now they had to deal with a monster _released from the core of the moon_. It never stops.

"The thing seemed to be seriously hurt by Chaos energy," Shadow sat next to Sonic, "does this mean we have to gather the Chaos Emeralds again?"

"President Tower hasn't ordered that yet but it is never a bad idea to have the Emeralds all in one safe place." Boris nodded.

"It was… _never_ able to do this before," Sheptilah said, "eat through metal, I mean. I also do not know about the Chaos Emeralds or what that entails, Shadow."

"It's possible the monsters have begun learning," Rouge's heels clicked as she stepped forward to turn off the video feed as it was beginning to loop, "which means getting that royal grimoire you spoke of is a priority, Sheptilah."

"I still need to charge," the witch rubbed her eyes, "I hardly have any energy. Sleeping helps but I need to actually lay out in the moonlight."

"You seemed to do just fine earlier today." Shadow huffed.

"Yes, well, you should see me at full power," she shot him an angry look, "glamours and local portals are nothing. Nannaic children can do them before they can walk."

"I don't think that matters," Rouge looked at her phone, "it's already eight in the morning on Tuesday. We completely missed the night."

"Just once I'd like to have a week where the whole world isn't threatened by crazy things," Sonic chuckled nervously to himself, "just one."

Sheptilah slumped back in her chair and dragged her hand down her face.

Sonic decided to change direction break the tension. "So where is this 'grim-more'?"

"The ziggurat." Sheptilah turned to look at the blue hedgehog.

"What the heck is a ziggurat?" Sonic raised an eyebrow.

"It's like a step pyramid but larger." Hope answered, "Entire cities could fit in them. They look like mountains from a distance."

"Right. Ours was in the middle of the desert Ivo pulled me from. It was an artificial oasis we built for travelers to stay in." Sheptilah elaborated on Hope's description.

The blonde girl pondered for a moment and then brought up some satellite imagery of the Dust Hill Zone.

"Most of this area remains unexplored but we couldn't possibly miss a structure so big from _space_ …" She flipped through images until she found something. "There. The Nannae ruins, right?"

"Yes, but I remember it being green and blue- water flowing like waterfalls down the sides and plants of all kinds in bloom. It looks so naked now." Sheptilah shook her head.

"I'm sure it was beautiful," Boris commented, "when this is all over I would like to see it restored." He smiled at the witch.

Rouge tried to stifle a laugh; was her boss _flirting?_ Shadow rolled his eyes at Rouge's behavior but she couldn't help it. Rouge thought it was cute how he looked at her whenever she was in the room.

"When should we leave for the ruins?" Sonic spoke in a small voice.

" _'We'?_ What is this 'we'? You can't come." Shadow shook his head. "This is GUN business."

He couldn't believe Sonic's audacity. One of these days the speedster was going to get himself killed.

"Shads, you can't do everything by yourself," Sonic stood, "I'm involved now, too." He was the hero of Mobius and saved the world so many times he lost count; if Sonic wrote memoirs they'd be a collector's set you'd have to dedicate your entire bookshelf to. It would take more than GUN’s objections to keep him from helping.

"No you aren't," Sheptilah grabbed the blue hedgehog's wrist and gently pulled him back into a seated position, "you must stay on the island and keep an eye out for more of those… _things_."

Rouge smiled. "I agree with Miss Witch. You gotta sit this one out, Sonic."

Well, _that_ stopped him.

"I will talk with President Tower about getting to the ruins as soon as possible. In the meantime, you should all go home and rest. All of you. Omega is already undergoing repairs." Boris escorted them to the door, "except for you, Sheptilah. I want to have a word with you."

With the meeting concluded, Hope and Rouge leave for their dorm. Shadow, however, lingers for a moment and instructs Sonic to wait for Sheptilah to take him back to the island before leaving himself. The cobalt hedgehog simply rolls his eyes and leans against the wall, wondering why Shadow couldn’t just teleport him back himself if he cared so much.

“I didn't see anything of note while trudging through corpses with Sonic and the witch." Eggman began, "However, I will say this: you are all incredibly lucky to have _me_ on your side in this matter."

Tower looked over the two rogues without much care. "You called _us_."

"Last time I'll ever do that." Eggman mumbled as he walked away.

Boris waited for the others to leave before he approached Sheptilah who was now leaning against the wall. He closed the door for privacy.

"I need to ask you a personal favor and it must stay between us," he let his eyes drop to the floor, "my wife is dying of renal failure. Can you heal her?"

"Renal failure?" She brushed her blood-stained hair behind her ear to buy time while her Oracle Stone translated. "Oh, the kidneys."

"Yes. Can you heal her?" His eyes were pleading. "She is in a private hospital room in this building. I can take you now."

"Sir…" Sheptilah began, "I would be happy to, but…"

"But what?"

She hesitated. Her race was a generous one who believed they were made to care for the planet and the those that lived on it but she knew that if she saved one person from death then they would all want to be healed. It wouldn't be fair to tell one person yes and another no but Sheptilah was tired, both physically and emotionally; she simply did not have the energy to spare.

"Why must it remain secret?" Sheptilah raised a white eyebrow.

"The president may think I’m abusing you for my own gain," his polished shoes were suddenly the most fascinating thing he ever laid eyes on, "and we cannot owe favors."

She felt sympathy for the old man.

Sheptilah extended a cold hand and pressed her fingers under his chin to bring his eyes up to hers. She smiled broadly, "I can do that and you will owe me nothing. However, there _is_ a caveat."

"What is it?" His voice was cracking.

"You have to wait a day or two while I charge. I do not have the energy right now."

"That's alright," he smiled, forcing his crow's feet to become more pronounced, "she's been waiting years for a kidney transplant. Another day or two will be fine."

Sheptilah nodded briskly and left the media room. Boris lingered for a while in the silence.

Tilly saw Sonic was waiting and was about to greet him but was interrupted by a familiar but annoying voice.

"There you are!" Eggman called. He walked down the hallway in a huff with Thunderbolt and multiple armed Mobians at his side. "I was told you were here."

"Doctor Eggman," Sheptilah smiled, "and the brave warrior Thunderbolt. I'm glad to see they don't have you both in chains."

“I _was_ cuffed briefly. After they took my weapons they let me go under the condition I have loaded weapons pressed into my flesh at all times.”

“Did they hurt you?” She cocked an eyebrow.

"I just want to get out of here before I run into my niece," he scratched his cheek, "I'm sure she has several choice words for me." He also wanted to get the hell out of there before they decided to re-arrest him for his war crimes.

"I was directed to go home so I assume that means I'm staying with you tonight, Doctor Eggman." Sheptilah yawned behind a fist.

That was the last straw. That witch _had_ to go. Thunderbolt had half a mind to take a good chunk out of that woman's leg and show her who's boss.

"You could stay at my place." Sonic offered.

Thunderbolt's head whipped around to the blue hedgehog and she felt hopeful that she'd get to crash at Eggman's place alone.

"I shouldn't be too far apart from my bound guardian right now but thank you, Sonic. I can warp us all back to the island, but it has to be done outside of this building." Sheptilah eyed the armed guards suspiciously.

 _Drat,_ the angry yellow puff thought, _guardian!?_

"Where are you going to stay, Miss Thunderbolt?" The witch leaned down and grinned.

"That's Egg Boss Thunderbolt to _you_ , Overlander." The blonde puff snapped. Sheptilah was taken aback by the tiny one's rudeness.

"She's coming with us back to my lair. I have to make repairs to her cybernetics." Eggman yawned too. "Don't mind her, Sheptilah; she's just tired. We all are."

The armed guards escorted all four of them outside so that Sheptilah could open a portal. The early morning sunlight was warm and blinding as the ocean surrounding the fortress shimmered. Sheptilah ran her fingers through the air, seemingly feeling around for something yet unseen. She finally snagged a fingernail on her mark and opened what looked like a floating mirror to the island lair doorway.

Sonic jumped in first and landed cleanly on his feet. He wasted no time and immediately sped off towards the shore, running across the ocean’s surface as if it were solid. His sheer intensity left a rainbow glittering in the droplets behind him and the first thing he did when he got home was take the longest, hottest shower he ever had in his life.

"I'm not going in _there_ ," Thunderbolt protested, "Doctor Eggman, you are the wisest, smartest man ever to walk Mobius but do you really trust a _witch?_ The troll twins Wendy and Walter come to mind."

"I do _not_ have time for this right now." Eggman bent down and picked up Thunderbolt by the base of her tail. She instinctively froze as chinchillas held by the tail are wont to and offered no further protests as she was carried into the portal. Sheptilah followed soon after and closed the portal’s opening behind her.

"Doesn't that hurt her?" The witch asked while Eggman gently set Thunderbolt on the ground. The chinchilla puffed up, outraged beyond belief. Her face was red with embarrassment and yet she didn't find Eggman's touch unwelcome; even if it was from lifting her like a grocery bag.

"Nah," he chuckled, "not as long as you pick them up by the very base of the tail and don't swing them like a lasso." He opened the door for them and was greeted by Orbot and Cubot. The two lackeys immediately complained about anything and everything they could.

"You let your dinner get cold," Orbot sulked, "I worked so hard on it."


	9. I Want It All

Gray clouds in the distance foretold of a heavy thunderstorm on the island.

Ivo asked the women to get along; although he was speaking almost exclusively to Thunderbolt. He promised the chinchilla he would repair her cybernetics after he took a nap, citing that working while exhausted would end poorly for her.

Sheptilah wandered into the kitchen hoping to find something to eat. A bright green apple sat alone in a basket on the counter, all but beckoning her to take it. Thunderbolt followed the woman hoping to find something for herself as Doctor Eggman had already retired to his room to nap without offering her anything first.

"What is your game, witch?" Thunderbolt snarled. "I demand you tell me."

Sheptilah made eye contact with Thunderbolt and took a bite out of the apple she held with both hands. She chewed slowly and deliberately, meeting the chinchilla’s indignation with a blank, unreadable expression.

"Tell me!" Thunderbolt stomped her foot. She did not deserve such disrespect from an _Overlander_.

"I'm an ancient witch queen and I have to save this damned planet," she swallowed her food, "and I am very tired." Deeming any energy expended on Thunderbolt a waste of her time, Sheptilah made her way to the door. The chinchilla dashed to block her path.

"I want to make one thing very clear, human," she bared her razor-sharp teeth, "Eggman is _mine_."

"In what capacity?" Sheptilah asked as she stepped over the diminutive Mobian. Though she didn’t expected an answer, Thunderbolt took this as an invitation to pursue her through the lair.

"We are lovers," the blonde puff stated matter-of-factly, "or we _will_ be."

“Wouldn't that kill you?" By this point, Sheptilah was humoring this nonsense for her own entertainment. Sure, marriage between and even the adoption of children by a human and a clever folk wasn’t strictly forbidden in her culture but never did she picture a union involving such a size discrepancy.

The Mobian stood in blessed silence for a moment before sprinting to keep up with her quarry’s pace. Sheptilah had located a bathroom and to say it was sterile and extremely minimalistic would be an understatement: all it contained was a claw-foot tub, a toilet and a sink.

Sheptilah walked over the tub and turned it on, running the water as hot as possible.

"What do you mean?" The chinchilla paused to catch her breath.

The witch turned her head and looked at the Mobian. "Seriously?"

Thunderbolt's cheeks turned red. She crossed her arms and looked away. "I didn't think that far." That was all she could come up with as an excuse.

From the mouth of its crater and down to the very foundation of its bedrock, Eggman's entire lair was state-of-art. This, as the witch would soon find out, included its bathroom facilities: the tub filled with a perfectly measured combination of scalding hot water mixed with wonderfully scented soap within minutes and all Sheptilah had to do was get in. She pulled off her clothes directly in front of Thunderbolt and sank into the rising layer of bubbles with a deep, contented sigh.

Unfortunately for her, Thunderbolt saw this as Sheptilah flaunting her human body and quickly became enraged once again. The chinchilla desperately wished her cybernetics weren't destroyed so that she could electrocute the human on the spot. She wanted to watch that snooty little 'queen' shriek in pain and then pawn off that shiny bauble on her chest before her body went cold.

Sheptilah took another bite from the apple, chewing slowly.

Thunderbolt jumped on the edge of the tub, prepared to scratch out Sheptilah's eyes. She was stopped when the witch split the apple in half and offered an uneaten piece to the chinchilla.

Thunderbolt was taken aback by this and pushed the witch's hand out of the way.

"I have no interest in anyone, miss Thunderbolt," Sheptilah offered the apple again, "I know I will not be alive at the end of this."

"Why?" Thunderbolt was suspicious of both the apple piece and her assurance of death. A witch offering an apple was never a good thing, especially not to darling and gorgeous 'princesses' like Thunderbolt.

“That thing you encountered was a monster from my time. We tried our hardest to fight it but it killed _everyone_ except me. I was sealed in a crystal until I was rescued by your Doctor Eggman." Sheptilah ate the last of her share of the fruit, "I expect that destroying them for all time would kill me. It nearly did the first time and I had the help of hundreds of my kind.

"Because of this, he is my guardian. We're bound at the soul by the magic that sealed me in the reliquary. He wants to sever this bond, which is fine, so that means we have to go dig up the family grimoire from the desert to learn how to do it."

Thunderbolt sat on the outside edge of the tub and snatched the apple out of Sheptilah's bony hand. She greedily munched away at it and made quick work of it.

"What does it mean to be bonded?" She wanted to learn as much as she could about this witch as possible to formulate a plan of attack.

"My people wanted to make sure I wouldn’t have to fend for myself in an unknown future so whoever freed me from they crystal would be bound to me by covenant. _Connected_ to me. If we're apart for too long the guardian will become sick and die. It was a really stupid plan but I didn't cast the spell so... whatever." Sheptilah scrubbed her arm where the iron had scraped her. Although the wound was thin and barely broke the skin it was bright, puffy and very irritated

"What happened there?" Thunderbolt asked with her cheeks full.

"Iron makes me sick." She brushed her hair out of her face and behind her ear. "Even a scrape or a cut makes me ill. I can't use my magic well if I'm in a big iron box like this lair, either. That's why I'm fine with severing the bond. I really need to get out of this prison."

 _Ah._ Perhaps Thunderbolt had misjudged the woman. _If I have any weaknesses,_ she thought to herself, _it's that I love Doctor Eggman too much. I'm just overprotective._

She stored that little tidbit about the iron in the evilest corner of her brain nonetheless; if the witch ever became uppity she could simply hop over to a pharmacist, pick up an iron supplement and destroy the woman from the inside out.

She imagined Sheptilah's face becoming swollen and ugly as she gasped for air.

Thunderbolt’s daydreaming was interrupted when she suddenly found herself lifted into the air, scrubbed by invisible hands, dried and then set back down on the floor once again all before she could even so much as get out a word in protest. Her soft fur was puffed out like a dandelion and the various tears and scratches on her uniform were repaired.

"What the-" she looked around, "did you do that? Don't use magic on me without my permission!" Thunderbolt was outraged by being manhandled.

"What? You were filthy." Sheptilah laughed. "Ivo is going to be so impressed with how cute you look now."

Thunderbolt gasped. "You think so? Too bad you couldn't fix my cybernetics, though." She was still plotting Sheptilah's murder and subsequent disposal, however. _Perhaps at the bottom of the sea…_

"Iron," the woman said in a sing-song voice. "Can't work with it. I can work with apples, though."

"What?" _So the apple_ was _poisoned! Well,_ Thunderbolt wondered, _if I was to fall into a deep sleep like Snow White only to be awoken by Doctor Eggman's true love's kiss… that wouldn't be so bad._

"Apples represent love, fertility and wealth," Sheptilah grinned mischievously, "If you want Doctor Eggman to fall in love with you... offer him an _apple_."

" _Any_ kind of apple?" Now the yellow chinchilla was listening. She leaned in close to get the juicy details.

"The largest, reddest apple you can get your paws on. Pick it yourself from the tree and whisper your desires into the flesh of the fruit, but don't bite into it. Hand-deliver it to him wrapped in gold paper when you are done. It will soften his hard-boiled heart." She lied. You use silver paper for love spells.

Sheptilah was becoming increasingly aware of the fact that getting anything done would require placating her living obstacles. This means that, along with gathering the grimoire, finding her familiar and assembling a makeshift coven to help gather the materials to recreate the staff her mothers used, she would also have to keep Doctor Eggman and Thunderbolt busy with stupid things and manipulating them into being compliant.

She had a feeling she already met the clever folk she was meant to spend the rest of her life with but after five millennia in stasis she lacked the awareness to ascertain their identity without resorting to rooting through the metaphysical plane once her power was restored. However, there were two things that she _was_ certain of:

First and foremost was that whoever it was, they were possessed of great power: she felt it when she was freed from her captivity and felt it again during her first encounter with the Mobians at the beach.

Secondly, she knew that Thunderbolt was, thankfully, not her familiar.

"You could probably sneak off to where he's sleeping and worm your way to under his arm." Sheptilah teased.

"You're right!" Thunderbolt sped out of the room to do just that.

"Oh." Was all the witch could say. _I didn’t think she’d take that seriously..._

Thunderbolt tried her best to recall the layout of Eggman’s lair but quickly ended up lost. Eventually she elects to focus on Eggman's cologne, that wonderful earthy cologne, and sniffed her way into his room. She saw that he, true to his word, had fallen asleep dangling halfway off the bed and with his shoes still on. The Overlander also appeared to be holding something in his hand.

The chinchilla could see just fine in the dark and wondered why his bed was so small, it didn't even look adequate for himself. Oh well, all the better to facilitate cuddles!

She gingerly crept towards Eggman, moving carefully so as not to wake him, and as she made her approach she noticed a photo of Metal Sonic on a shelf next to the bed. She was already plotting to replace it with a shot of herself.

Now at the Doctor’s side, she inspected the object in his grasp. It looked like a bronze ring, almost a tiara.

_A tiara?_ Thunderbolt picked up the faint smell of the witch on the circlet. She narrowed her glowing emerald eyes and grinned evilly as she slipped the object from Eggman's hand, stashing it under the bed. _That witch will burn at the stake and I will reap the rewards._

She hopped onto the bed and nestled next to Doctor Eggman's head. The megalomaniacal Mobian quickly fell asleep, visions of human vivisection dancing in her mind.


	10. Float Away

_Forget everything you saw_ , Sonic lied to himself, _th_ _ey were all robots. No humans or Mobians. All robots with synthetic skin and bones._ By the time Sonic had gotten out of the shower his hands and feet were pruney and his spines were pressed flat against his back.

The bathroom mirror was fogged over which was just as well- he didn't want to see how awful he looked. He grabbed a towel and vigorously rubbed his spikes dry; procrastinating by drying as many as he could individually.

Now thoroughly patted dry, the hedgehog dragged himself to his kitchenette with a zombie-like gait, intent on distracting himself with a snack.

He opened the refrigerator and stared blankly at its contents; it was as if his brain couldn't process what he was peering at. He saw vague shapes: lumpy things wrapped in foil, jars of chili sauces and random fruit haphazardly thrown around cans of soft drinks.

He lingered in the cold radiating from the appliance for a moment before gingerly shutting the door without getting anything. Sonic flopped into his hammock and prayed for a dreamless sleep.

\-------------------------------------- • -------------------------------------

Amy pinched the bridge of her nose in frustration.

Sweet sandalwood incense burned in her bedroom as she sat with her legs crossed facing the headboard with tarot cards spread out on the neatly arranged blankets. Pink and white candles flickered impatiently.

The pink hedgehog had done this many times; but this time her cards were giving her mixed signals and were hard to read. She had a tarot handbook and her own grimoire with notes to refer to sitting next to her and neither helped. Clearly she would have to simplify her spread and questions.

She gathered up her cards and shuffled the deck, taking extra care to feel the smooth cardstock the images were printed on. The illustrations were gorgeous watercolors of different flowers.

"Can I trust the witch?" She held the deck to her lips. "Or rather, can we trust what she says?"

The first card she pulled was the King Of Cups, reversed. She then pulled another, The High Priestess, and set it sideways on top of the first.

Amy wrote this down in her notebook and moved onto her next question without reshuffling the deck.

"How do I protect myself?"

The first card pulled in response was The Lovers and the next was the Ten Of Cups. Both were upright.

Amy penciled these into her notes as well; she always wrote down results before calculating their meaning.

"How do I protect my friends?" She asked as her final question for the day. The hedgehog was getting tired and hoped to nap after this.

Her result was Death and Seven Of Pentacles. Once again, both were upright.

The first pair of cards, Amy figured, meant that Sheptilah was powerful and emotionally manipulative but not untrustworthy. Because that makes perfect sense, she scoffed. She's manipulative but you can trust her. The second set meant to befriend the witch and make her like family. The third response simply meant that change only comes from investments.

 _Fine,_ she thought, _be obvious. What a sassy deck I've got._

A familiar chime cut the silence. Amy wrapped her cards in the red silk handkerchief they arrived in and felt around the bed for her phone.

"Where is that darned thing," the chiming continued, "I hear you! Stop yelling at me." She found it tucked under her pillow.

It was a text from Rouge.

**[WhiteEcho]** Amy, how are you doing?

 **[Th!nkP!nk]** hey, I'm ok. Hbu?

 **[WhiteEcho]** I wanted to check on you

 **[WhiteEcho]** stuff at the base was bad

 **[WhiteEcho]** and Sonic just left

Amy got up and blew out her candles. 'Stuff at the base was bad' was understatement of the year. She took her phone with her into the kitchen to get herself a snack. She found a half-eaten muffin to finish off.

**[Th!nkP!nk]** I'll be ok

 **[Th!nkP!nk]** wait he was held there all night?

 **[WhiteEcho]** yeah. He wants to come with us

 **[WhiteEcho]** to some ancient building but we all said NO

 **[WhiteEcho]** so he's probably grumpy

 **[WhiteEcho]** keep an eye on him ok? We need you all to stay on the island

 **[WhiteEcho]** and defend it

 **[Th!nkP!nk]** I always got my eye on Sonic! ❤︎❤︎❤︎

 **[WhiteEcho]** you're so cute, don't ever change ok?

 **[Th!nkP!nk]** never!

Amy chuckled, set the phone on her coffee table and laid back on her sofa. No matter what was happening in the world she knew she could always rely on her friends. Even the aloof ones.

\-------------------------------------- ✫ -------------------------------------

Hope was in her dorm writing up notes for Cabbot on her laptop. The lights were off and the only illumination came from the soft glow of the computer screen.

**Wednesday December 10th**

\- Thunderbolt's Soumerca base is attacked by the 'witch eaters' and put on lock-down

**Sunday December 15th**

\- Doctor Ivo 'Eggman' Robotnik claims he discovers the witch Shep-til-a in the southwest quadrant of Dust Hill

\- Shep-til-a is brought to GUN by Shadow and Rouge for questioning and voluntarily surrenders herself to cell block 5

**Monday December 16th**

\- Shep-til-a is given a medical work-up and leaves the premises

\- Thunderbolt's distress call makes it through

\- Doctor Eggman requests assistance from GUN at Sheptilah's behest

\- Sonic the hedgehog, Amy Rose the hedgehog, Tails the fox, Knuckles the echidna and Sticks the badger all come along but remain outside

\- Thunderbolt the chinchilla along with thirty-three Egg army survivors are removed

\- Doctor Eggman is given a GUN communicator by President Abraham Tower

[Last Edit: 12/16 11:20]

Hope was sick to her stomach. The very _concept_ of being forced to work with Doctor Eggman, even if it was from a distance, made bile wind its way into her throat.

Ivo was her uncle. They were related. She is related to a _monster_.

All the chaos and bloodshed he's caused and will cause. She rested her elbow on her desk and her chin in her hand and stared at the screen with her upper lip curled.

On top of all that, another witch has wormed her way into the Kintobor family drama. Apparently Regina Ferrum and the Naugus twins were just the beginning. Now they have some ancient queen to deal with and the eldritch abominations that come bundled with her.

Great. _Wonderful_. Fun-filled times ahead.

However... unlike Regina, Sheptilah's magic doesn't work with iron. That's her weakness; her Achilles' heel. She can't understand typed or pre-recorded language, either.

 _If Sheptilah proves to be untrustworthy_ , Hope pondered, _we can always throw her in the Special Zone with Feist to suffer with everyone else._

A knock on the door broke her concentration.

"Come in." She called, closing the lid on her laptop. Shadow stepped in holding a foil-wrapped hotdog.

"You missed lunch so I brought it to you." He turned on the light. Hope's dorm was just as bare as his was save for pictures of Team Dark plastered on the walls.

"Oh, thank you." She took the food and munched at it. "I totally lost track of time. I was writing up the summaries for Mr. Cabbot."

"I figured you were busy," he sat on the edge of the bed, "are you doing okay?"

"Yeah, I'm just… old family memories bothering me. You know how it is."

"If it makes you feel better, the witch said she was going to kick Eggman's ass when this was all over." He grinned at her.

"Did she really?" Hope's mouth curled into a smile. "It's a lot to kick. I hope she's up for the challenge." She took another bite. "So you trust her?"

"I don't trust anyone that works with Eggman, but it's not entirely her fault. It's actually somewhat my own fault, too. I let him destroy the moon years ago and she doesn't know this."

He stared at his metal skates. "All those people that died in the Soumercian base… they died because of my actions, even if it was indirectly."

"Shadow," Hope sulked, "none of this is your fault. Nobody could've known this would happen." She set what remained of the hotdog on her desk and sat next to the hedgehog.

"Still," he began, "I thought I was making up for my past. I guess it will catch up to me over and over again."

Hope wrapped an arm around his thin waist and pulled him in for a hug. "You've already done that and then some. This is Eggman's past that's catching up, not yours."

Hope was wise beyond her years and as a result was one of the few Overlanders he could stand to be around for more than an hour. She has also proven to be one of Team Dark’s staunchest allies, being a member in all but name, and was a trusted confidant that he could always turn to when losing his way.

The hedgehog gently rested his head against her shoulder. He remained quiet for a long while, lost in thought.

"Something else is bothering me, too." His ears flicked impatiently.

"What?" Hope sighed.

"She's way too nice." Shadow closed his eyes and wrinkled his brow.

"Wait, her being nice bothers you?"

" _Yes_ ," he stood up, "and I think she pretends to be weak to feign innocence."

He didn't trust many people but he certainly didn't trust strangers that come bearing armfuls of gifts and promises.

"And the witch orb. She just bit into her hand like it was nothing so we could simply summon her if need be; and those promises that she'd fix whatever Eggman broke. I think she is manipulative and more suspicious than she lets on. Why everyone seems to trust her right off the bat is beyond even me."

" _She bit into her own hand?_ " Hope's mouth curled in disgust.

"Yes. Just… right in the area between your thumb and forefinger." He held the fingers apart for emphasis. "She bit right into them and drew blood and picked up sand. The witch orb works as she described it but… it was just weird." Shadow has seen a lot of nonsense but witnessing someone self harm by taking a bite out of their own meat was unsettling to him.

"Yikes." The skin between her fingers ached just thinking about it.

Hope sat up with a start and grabbed her laptop.

"I was doing some casual research on witchcraft and what you just said reminded me of something I saw." She pulled up a search bar and began typing frantically. She brought up a webpage detailing blood magic rituals.

"This may be out of date since she's thousands of years old but," she scrolled down, "it sounds like she may be a blood witch. If this is correct, and it may not be, blood magic performed using the witch's own blood is irreversible."

" _Irreversible?_ " Shadow knew nothing of magic beyond technomancy and crystalmancy.

"As in, the spells cannot ever be broken; even by the witch themselves. So those witch orbs are _permanent_." Hope paused.

"That also means anyone whose blood she comes in contact with she can use to curse them or kill them by mixing it with her own."

"That could explain why she's so quick to heal people and uses her hair for it. The ends were pink with it after the run-in at the Egg base." Now the wheels in his head were turning.

\------------------------------------ ☽ ✫ ☾ ----------------------------------

The witch had gotten out of the tub and caught her vision in the mirror’s silvery surface. She was drawn into scrying without intending to.

 _Show me_ , after a few minutes she felt her ears begin to ring, _show me my familiar._ Her eyes unfocused and her vision blurred.

 _Show me._ She felt angry. Very angry. The world was whirling around her.

Suddenly the world shifted as if she was high up, walking precariously on a narrow surface about to fall. The feeling in her stomach of being dropped from high up was nauseating.

Her breath quickened and her grip tightened. Her knuckles were almost as white as the porcelain she was clutching.

Death. She felt death pounce. Something hot entering the back of her head and then an explosion of color followed by blackness. The sensation of heavy iron holding her arms and legs down.

The feeling of running in a loop-de-loop and pushing yourself forward with tension.

The taste of sugar flooded her mouth, saccharine sweetness making her teeth ache and saliva drip from her chin.

The feeling of drowning overcame her next. That dreamy, warm feeling of drowning when you accept that you are about to die and go with the flow of it.

Blood everywhere that wasn't yours.

Starlight was the next thing that came into her mind. Starlight so blinding and beautiful. Something golden like a streak of fire crossed her line of sight. She wanted to catch whatever it was with all of her heart.

The planet from high above looks so beautiful and strange. _Was Zanu really this green?_

A strange kind of twinkling music coming from instruments she did not yet know the name of drowned out the incessant ringing in her skull. Brightly colored lines in the shapes of an archer and a whale. Lights that felt ice cold to the touch.

 _Who is my familiar_ … She demanded again. Flight- the feeling of being thrown high into the air only to be caught and let down gently. Sheptilah was experiencing all of these sensations at once and shivered.

The feeling of questioning your own reality. She was suddenly unsure if she existed or was a dream. Who am I? Who am I? The words bounced in her brain like distorted echoes in a tunnel.

_Who is my familiar? Tell me, Universe. Who is it? Where are they?_

Sharp. Round. Sharp. The adjectives kept changing. Which was it? It could not be both.

Hot. Cold. Why is this so conflicting? Blue eyes. Eyes as blue as the morning sky.

"I can't move my feet."

She felt intense fear trying to access whomever it was that was her familiar. Something was blocking her and it began to hurt. She felt pain shoot up her arms and feet as if her bones were snapping. Sheptilah tried to snap out of scrying but it was not working.

Then a crack. The clatter of something breaking on the floor’ along with a painful thrumming in her foot snapped her out of scrying and forced her vision to refocus.

She saw she had chunks of porcelain in her hands and another had hit her toes. She broke the sink.

She looked up into the mirror and for a split second saw herself with only one glowing eye.

Sheptilah tore her gaze away from the mirror and quickly gave herself a once over. She turned to the tub and saw the water had barely begun to drain. The scrying felt like hours but only seconds had passed.

She was afraid of her familiar.


	11. Who Was In My Room Last Night?

Orbot was cleaning nearby when heard the noise and floated off to investigate. He saw the mess Sheptilah had made and was incensed.

He had a hand on his 'hip' and was pointing at her with the other. "Do you know how long it took him to pick out that pedestal sink? Four hours. Four! We were standing in the hardware store for that long so he could decide on a sink he hardly ever uses. Why did you break it?"

"Hm?" Sheptilah still didn't understand the robot.

"Oh right, you can't talk to me," Orbot went up to her and pushed her out of the bathroom so he could begin repairs, "might as well since nobody listens to me anyway. And put on some clothes!" He punctuated his anger by slamming the door.

Eggman was awakened by the commotion and shuffled blearily toward the source. He was so exhausted that he didn't even notice Sheptilah was nude. All he saw of her was a mass of white surrounding a brown, vaguely human-shaped figure.

"What did you do?" He asked, exhaustion as obvious in his voice as it was his appearance. He looked ready to fall over at any moment.

"I accidentally broke the washbasin." She was still shaking from the scrying.

"Don't do it again."He turned around and walked to the living room to flop on the sofa. He landed with a soft 'oomf' and was right back to sleep, snoring loudly.

 _That's not even where he woke up from_ , Sheptilah thought, _and that's where I wanted to sleep!_

Sheptilah herself went to Eggman's room and curled up under the blanket next to the still-sleeping Thunderbolt since it was the only other place she knew of to rest. The chinchilla rolled over and nuzzled next to Sheptilah's cheek thinking it was Eggman's. The witch was enthused with how soft Thunderbolt's fur was and snuggled up closer. She felt much better not being alone.

The peace didn't last very long.

It was only a few hours into the afternoon when Eggman had woken up on the sofa. He didn't remember falling asleep there but he didn't care to question it since he slept there more often than his own bed.

He trotted into the kitchen to make himself some coffee and review any new messages on the Eggnet. He noticed a pile of garbage by the entrance that Orbot was tying closed.

"What did you do?" His tone was one of annoyance.

"Me? I did nothing! It was that lady friend of yours. She broke the sink!" Orbot slung the bag over his shoulder and left to take it to the dumpster out back.

"Huh. I feel like… I already knew that. Hm." He scratched his bald head with a gloved hand.

He should have felt angry but he didn't. _Maybe it has to do with the bonding,_ he thought, _I will have to push for the separation_. The very concept of not being in control of his own emotions was depressing.

Orbot came back in with Cubot who was out tending to the garden. Eggman ordered the two to start making some food for himself and the two visitors.

"Remember that Sheptilah is a vegetarian. Thunderbolt will eat whatever you put in front of her but she prefers dried food." He was fixing himself a cup of coffee. "I'm going to go shower. Where are the girls?"

"Scanning…" Orbot was connecting with the internal surveillance, "They're both in your bed."

"Oh." Eggman pursed his lips. "That's… _unexpected_." With coffee in hand he walked to his room nearby and turned on the light.

“Five more minutes, Clove." Thunderbolt mumbled. She rolled over to shield her eyes from the light and in the process got tangled up in Tilly's hair like a fly in a web.

The witch stirred in response. She opened her eyes and squinted at the brightness. "Who turned on the sun?"

Ivo sipped his drink. "While I'm typically not opposed to having women in my bed- you have about thirty seconds to get out of here before Thunderbolt fully wakes up and rips out your jugular."

"She wouldn't," Tilly smiled nervously, "right?"

"Twenty-five seconds…" He tapped his foot for each second that passed. "Twenty-four… when she rips you apart and I am not going to be able to put you back together because I'm not that kind of doctor. Nineteen…"

His calculations were wrong. Thunderbolt was roused by his talking and went to stand but found herself struggling against the massive amount of hair she was wrapped in. Tilly sat up, covered herself with the blanket with one hand and shook Thunderbolt out of her locks with the other.

The chinchilla landed on the pillow face-first. She lifted her head and looked at Eggman, anger and embarrassment burning on her brow in equal measure.

"I can explain!" She started, but realized it was of no use since there was nothing to explain.

"It's so cute when my underlings get along." He quipped.

Sheptilah rolled her eyes indignantly. "I am not your underling; if anything you are _my_ underling."

"You keep telling yourself that." He smiled behind his mug. He certainly couldn't see anything of Sheptilah's that would warrant an R-rating and her normal clothing left little to the imagination regardless. Ancient desert dwellers seemed to enjoy the climate in two ways: wearing a lot or wearing a little. Sheptilah apparently came from a culture that practiced the latter.

Thunderbolt let out a horrified gasp when she realized Sheptilah was 'al fresco'.

" _Where are your clothes?!_ " Thunderbolt's tail bristled with agitation. "How dare you defile this sacred space." She pointed a gloved finger at the Overlander. "You make me sick!"

Shepitlah snapped her fingers and in an instant was fully ‘clothed’ in the scraps she was originally found in. "Are you less upset now?" She stood and stepped on her circlet. "What's this doing in here?" She retrieved it and put it on her head where it belonged.

Eggman laughed. “Relax, it’s okay. She’s not from our time. They didn’t have the same kind of modesty or shame we do. It’s culture shock.”

Thunderbolt smoothed down her fur. “If you say so.”

"Are you hungry, T.B.?" He asked the chinchilla. "Orbot and Cubot are making something for all three of us."

"I get to eat in Lord Eggman's home? I'm so honored!" She clapped her hands together gleefully. Eggman gathered up the clothes he intended to change into after setting his empty cup on the dresser.

"We'll discuss new plans for the Soumercian base over dinner. Right now I need to tidy up." He shot Thunderbolt a look over his shoulder, "and no fighting." He left for the bathroom and wanted to inspect the damage done.

"Yes Sir!" She saluted him. How exciting; a new base! Maybe this time she'd get to pick the interior decorator.

"Thunderbolt," the woman turned to the Mobian and whispered, "Remember what I said about the apple and that you don't have to worry about me and Ivo? I'm serious about that."

"Well, I was thinking about that. How could a spell like that even work for me? I'm not a witch." The chinchilla was looking around the room and decided to snoop a little. She sniffed around and looked in some of his drawers and was disappointed to see he had several copies of the same clothes he wore all the time.

"All sapients can perform magic like mine," Sheptilah made the bed a little neater. "Some better than others. You, Doctor Eggman, anyone with a heart and a brain… you can do magic. It's a wonderful thing. It's an energy that unites all living things throughout the universe. It's also possible to borrow my energies for your purposes."

"I know that you can do anything with the Chaos Emeralds if you have enough of them," the chinchilla shut the drawer, "and that if you have magical artifacts you can use those."

"I don't know anything about Chaos Emeralds," Sheptilah bobbed her hair again with a glamour, "come on, let's go eat. Stop snooping."

"Don't tell me what to do, _human_." Thunderbolt snapped but did follow Sheptilah to the dining room.

They passed by the bathroom and could hear the shower running at full blast. Steam was crawling out from under the door and Thunderbolt was tempted to take a peek and lingered.

"All human men look the same, Thunderbolt," Sheptilah nudged her along gently with her bare foot. "Don't be a creep."

"You are no fun." She scowled.

Orbot and Cubot had set out a salad for Sheptilah but reheated the leftover chicken for everyone else. The blonde chinchilla’s mouth watered at the sight of the fried chicken and bolted for the table.

\-------------------------------------- ☀ -------------------------------------

The bathroom looked surprisingly untouched aside from a cracked tile and the missing sink.

"What the _hell_ did that woman do to destroy it in the first place? I spent four hours picking that sink out and I don't think they make it anymore." Eggman was not pleased with the thought of having to buy a brand new one.

It wouldn't match the current fixtures and he'd have to redo the whole damn bathroom!

He ran the shower hot because he just didn't feel clean unless he was properly boiled. After removing everything except for his glasses he got in and inhaled the cleansing steam.

"This is ridiculous," he was mumbling as he lathered up, "ludicrous and absurd. Well, maybe not. I have been wanting to redo the lair. Having guests for once proves I should really have a second bedroom or three. I could also upgrade to an en suite. Maybe put in another closet for my weapons." The ideas were bouncing in his head wildly.

Then he started thinking _bigger_. Maybe a terraced garden out back instead of the small one he has now. He could create tiny robotic bees that’d kill all the flowers on the island except for those in his beautiful botanical garden and he could charge admission for people to come see it!

Why stop there? He could grow his own stock of genetically modified fruits and vegetables and those same bees could kill every crop on the island! People would have no choice but to starve if they didn't buy his special food!

He finished washing, dried off and got redressed. What an invigorating shower! All of his best thinking was done under hot water.

He combed his fingers through his silky mustache with excitement.

"Ladies, where are y-" As he entered the dining room he saw Thunderbolt was standing on the table with a knife pointed at Sheptilah just inches from her throat.

"I _explicitly_ forbade fighting." Eggman frowned. "Feet off the table, T.B."

Thunderbolt was startled and dropped the knife. "I'm so sorry, Lord Eggman! I was trying to teach the witch a lesson in humility!" She jumped down into her seat and sat primly with her hands gripping the table's edge.

Eggman looked at Sheptilah and raised his eyebrows in surprise.

"Miss Chinchilla wanted me to wear an Egg army uniform and I refused." She sighed with relief at his presence.

The knife, like most like it, was forged from steel, which itself contained iron. One small nick to the jugular and the witch in her weakened state would've been about as lively as a carrot.

"Thunderbolt is extremely passionate about my military-industrial complex and I look for that in an employee," Thunderbolt squeaked with joy when she heard those words, "however, she is _merciless_."

"I don't like the color red." Sheptilah took a bite of her salad, her hand shaking slightly. "I prefer purple."

"You threatened a witch over _that?_ " Eggman knew she had a short temper but that was an overreaction.

"She said I looked like a pumpkin!" Thunderbolt bit into her chicken angrily.

"Ah, well then you kind of deserved it, Your Highness." He sat at the head of the table while his two guests sat across from each other.

"Sir, I'm extremely honored to be sharing a meal with you." She licked the chicken grease from her fingers. “And I'm excited to discuss the new Soumercian base."

Sheptilah listened to the conversation intently but did not participate. The two excitedly discussed potential improvements such as better weapons storage, an improved security system and perhaps an internal bunker with leisurely creature comforts to improve morale.

She was horrified at how gentle Doctor Eggman could be and yet how vicious he truly was. She thought back to how carefully he pulled Sonic from the vent, as if the hedgehog would shatter if he squeezed too hard.

And yet now here he was gleefully discussing his goal of world domination over dinner.

"Thank you for the meal." Sheptilah bowed slightly and rose from the table but the two were too engrossed in their conversation to notice. The witch went outside to rest in the meditation garden. It was small but lovely: the clouds were finally dissipating and the air was sweet because of the harsh downpour that beat against the sea all day.

She laid back on the wet grass as the sun set in the distance, staining the sky a bloody orange.

\-------------------------------------- ✫ -------------------------------------

"Sonic, are you home?" Sonic didn’t have a door so Amy had to knock on the wall. "Sticks is doing her thing, again."

Sonic groaned and sat up. "What is she doing? What time even is it?" He saw the sky was painted a deadly red from the sun retreating.

"You have to see it for yourself." Amy shook her head in disbelief. "Tails and Knuckles are helping her. Also, it's sunset."

Amy led a groggy Sonic to Sticks' bungalow in the jungle. The badger was hammering long metal pipes into the perimeter of her home. Tails was standing and watching while Knuckles was actively helping by unceremoniously shoving pipes directly into the stone like cutting into butter.

"Sticks, what are you doing?" Sonic was perplexed. "Is this another one of your traps?"

"No," the badger looked up from her work, "I'm keeping that thing Sheep Tiller or whatever her name is out."

"Sheptilah?" Sonic corrected her. "She's a witch, not a 'thing'."

"Yeah, that; and no, she isn't." Sticks trudged up to Sonic and Amy. "Witches are not hurt by iron! Fairies are."

"Everything is hurt by iron if you hit them hard enough with it." Knuckles chimed in as he shoved the last pipe in place.

“He’s right.” Sonic nodded in agreement with the echidna.

"Sticks… there's all kinds of witches," Amy had one arm across her chest and was gesturing with the other, "what's the difference anyway?"

"There are all kinds of _fairies_ , Amy. They steal babies and replace them with sticks called changelings! They sour your milk and keep people as love slaves! They hate the sound of church bells and will steal sparkly things. The precious sparklies… Sheet Stealer is not stealing my glittery preciouses!" Sticks balled her hands into fists and punched the air.

" _Sheptilah_ ," Sonic corrected her again, "it's not that hard."

"She's been doing this all day, guys." Tails was exhausted but was stuck ‘supervising’ to make sure nobody got hurt.

“Mispronouncing her name or building this thing?” Amy asked.

“Both.” Tails sighed.

"If you see a fairy ring, don't walk into it," Sticks warned, "Or you'll be whisked off to Fairyland! ...Or maybe the government's secret brainwashing station. Could be the same place; I'm not totally sure."

Sticks stuffed the pipes with sticky clay and wrenched knives in handle-first so that their pointed ends stuck straight up as a warning.

"Fairy or not, she's working with Eggman." Tails pulled out the knives carefully, "which means we cannot trust her but we cannot kill her either, Sticks."

"It's not like she wants to work with Eggy; Sheptilah's _bonded_ to him." Sonic took the knives from Tails and tossed them in the bushes.

Just then, they heard a shriek from above. It was the witch and she was falling.

Sheptilah had suddenly found herself high up in the air and quickly righted herself, landing softly with the aid of magic.

"What in the world-" Tails backed up.

"Oh! Did I say your name three times?" Sonic forgot he kept the witch orb in his glove. "I didn't mean to summon you." That was embarrassing. He could've accidentally dropped her right on the pipes, too. That would bring down Sticks' property value to say the least.

"I told you she couldn't be trusted!" Sticks pulled her boomerang out of her skirt and threw it at Sheptilah's head. It smacked her in the temple with a thud and fell to the ground.

"Ow! Hey!" The witch rubbed her head. "This is the second time today I was assaulted."

"Hey! It's that… lady!" Knuckles was a little slow on the uptake. "I remember you from yesterday, but you had longer hair back then." He walked up to her and looked her over, "don't fairies usually have wings?"

"A fairy? I don't know what that is but I certainly don't have wings. You, however, are the largest Mobian I ever laid eyes on," He was as tall as Sheptilah, "what are you?"

"I am Knuckles the Echidna!" He said flexing proudly.

"What's an echidna?" She was unfamiliar with that animal.

" _I'm_ an echidna," he repeated, "pay attention!"

"Egg-laying endotherm known as a 'monotreme'." Amy said flatly. "Also a bit of a meathead, but he's got a big heart."

"Thanks." Sheptilah raised her eyebrow. "And this is…?" Gesturing to the badger.

"None of your business!" Sticks got into a defensive stance.

"Sticks, be nice." Amy chided.

“Thanks for telling her my name!” The badger shouted.

Sheptilah picked up the boomerang and offered it to the badger on her open palm. "I mean you no harm."

"My name is Tails," the fox came up to her and shook her hand, "see?" he showed her his twin tails.

"That's different." The witch smiled. "How wonderful."

"You _reek_ of Eggman," Sticks took the boomerang back, "badly."

Sheptilah put her hands on her hips and shifted her weight to one leg. "That man is a menace and when this is all over I'm probably going to have him sent to a void somewhere far, far away."

"What did he do _now?_ " Sonic pulled the woman by her wrist away from Sticks who looked ready to bite.

Sheptilah waved him away. "He's going to rebuild the Soumerca base. I don't think he's even given thought to all of his people that were murdered. He seems completely unaffected by everything and so does that chinchilla."

"He's probably repressing his emotions." Amy cut in. "This is a man who cries over his robots being destroyed. It's not healthy. One day he's going to boil over and crack." She emphasized the last word by snapping her fingers.

The sky quickly grew dark as night began to set in. A cool breeze caressed the group as tiny stars twinkled brightly overhead, shining lights amidst a sea of indigo.

"A king who mourns their toys and not their people," Sheptilah dramatically looked at the sky, "is the kind of king who gets… you know." She drew her hand across her throat.

"What? What is it? A sore throat?" Knuckles scratched his head. "That would be awful."

Tilly thought that perhaps the gesture was too antiquated for them. She sighed softly. "In a manner of speaking, yes."

"She means killed, Knucks." Amy pinched the bridge of her nose with frustration. “Beheaded. Like with an axe or a guillotine.”

"Oh! It's better than a sore throat." The big red one nodded sagely.

"Oh… uh do you remember how you said you'd fix anything he broke?" Sonic chuckled nervously. "I have an idea of what you can do to help."

"What's that?" Amy was confused. "There's nothing in town that needs fixing."

"So fix Eggman." Sonic stood with his hands on his hips and puffed his chest out proudly.

There was a pause before everyone broke out into laughter.

Sheptilah's sides were aching from giggling so hard. "There's not enough magic in the world for that one, Sonic."


	12. Relentless

Rouge sat at her vanity brushing her hair. "A blood witch? Shadow, you're being paranoid" She squinted at the hedgehog's reflection in the mirror. He stood in her doorway and leaned against the frame with his arms crossed.

Their dorms were the same size but hers seemed larger and more inviting. Pictures of friends and magazine cut-outs taped to the walls and a fuzzy rug that matched her pink bedspread added color to an otherwise bleak room. Overall, it was very cute and but perhaps a little juvenile for someone her age.

"I'm being prepared, Rouge." He was annoyed with her waving off the possibility. Rouge picked up a spray bottle filled with sweet perfume and spritzed it on her neck.

"Rouge…" He grew irritated with her excessive preening. "It's not a date."

"Hmph!" She turned to pout at him. “We're going to be in the vehicle for a long time and in the big, ancient building even longer than that. I at least want to smell nice."

"You always smell nice. In the time I’ve known you you have never been smelly. We leave in an hour and here you are tarting yourself up! You aren't even fully geared." He put his arms up in frustration and walked over to her. "What perfume is that, anyway? It's a bit strong."

She smiled coyly. “It's called 'Dark Kiss'." She pursed her lips.

"Ooh, Dark Kiss." He mocked her playfully. "Who are you trying to be fancy for?"

Rouge turned back to her mirror and smiled. "Myself." She blew herself a kiss and winked at her reflection.

  
Both Rouge and Shadow's ears swiveled to the noise of Hope running down the hall. "Hey, guys!" She said breathlessly as she came to Rouge's dorm. "Ooh, you smell nice!"

"Thank you, Hope!" Rouge shot a sassy look at Shadow and he rolled his eyes in return. "What's up?"

  
"President Tower was considering inviting Sheptilah to join GUN if the mission goes well; but that's not why I'm excited!" She was bouncing on the balls of her feet and grinning wider than they’ve ever seen.

"I was about to point out that you didn't like the woman." Shadow sat on Rouge's bed and sunk into it, caught off-guard by how plush it was. It was like landing on a warm marshmallow and he struggled to sit back up. "Rouge, your bed is eating me alive." He held out his hand so she could pull him out of it.

Rouge chuckled to herself and stood to help free Shadow from the clutches of her bed. “What is it, honey? The suspense is killing me!"

"There's a Chaos Emerald near or in the ziggurat!" Hope chirped. "So we get to kill two birds with one stone tonight!"

Shadow smiled. "That's great!" He turned to Rouge and asked under his breath what the bed's stuffing was.

"Memory foam pellets," she winked, "I sleep like the dead on it."

"Why are we leaving at night, anyway?" Shadow brushed his spines back down. "Wouldn't going during the day be more practical?"

"It's exclusively Cabbot's decision. He thinks Sheptilah is nocturnal and prefers moonlight over sunlight." Hope shrugged. "She's certainly not nocturnal but he says it's 'her house' so it's a matter of politeness according to him. I think he has a crush on her."

"I know I prefer working by moonlight." Rouge stated. "It also helps Shadow blend in better to his surroundings. Sometimes all you can see his white breast fluff floating in the darkness."

"I'm stealthy no matter where I am." He puffed out his furry chest. "I am the Ultimate Life Form and black goes with everything."

"Yeah, and you just almost drowned in a mattress." The bat snickered.

He turned away and huffed. "Cabbot is a married man, Hope. He better not have a crush on anyone but his wife."

"His wife's dying," Rouge frowned, "she is a poor candidate for a kidney transplant, right? So she basically lives tied to that dialysis machine. It happens sometimes. Your spouse starts dying so you look… elsewhere for later."

"Just because your wife is dying doesn't mean you start planning to sow your oats elsewhere," Shadow crossed his arms, "it's just crass."

"Grandpa, nobody says 'sow your oats' anymore." Rouge teased him. "Besides, I was kidding about the crush thing. I think he wants her to heal his wife."

Hope furrowed her brow. "Tower is going to blow a gasket if he finds out; but I suppose sometimes it is better to ask for forgiveness rather than permission."

"Tch," Shadow scoffed, "he's desperate if he is resorting risking his career by dealing with witches… but I understand." He was thinking about Gerald and Maria. His scowl softened into a slight frown and he looked lost in thought. "I understand completely…"

\------------------------------------ ☽ ☾ ----------------------------------

  
"Try not to summon me by accident anymore," the Overlander lightly patted Sonic on the head, "I'm always happy to drop in, though. Anything that gets me away from Thunderbolt."

Sonic blushed with embarrassment. "Again, sorry about that."

Sheptilah looked around in the darkness. "Since I'm out here I might as well explore the island a little."

"I got my eye on you." Sticks gestured with her fingers. "Alright! Everybody off my property! Scram!" She shooed her friends away and slammed the door to her hut shut before promptly moving to the window to spy on them while they still lingered outside.

"Sheptilah, I actually have questions for you! I am way into archaeology and anthropology and I want to learn your language! Everything about you is so fascinating." Amy smiled sweetly.

"Ask away," the human walked away and gestured for them to follow her, “but I reserve the right to not answer.”

"I actually have a lot of questions, too," the little blond fox twisted his tails together nervously, "and I'm afraid of the answers."

The Mobians turned on their luminous garments to light the way. The human was amazed at the beauty of the neon lights embedded into their clothes and accessories.

"This is nothing; you should see what I have back at my workshop. You have so much to catch up on after having been asleep for thousands of years." Tails beamed proudly.

"How long is a year? We measured our passage of time in seasons. I'm sixty-four seasonal changes old." The witch shrugged.

"There is no way you are a sixteen year old girl." Tails narrowed his eyes at her.

"Why are you dividing by four? We only have two seasons: wet and dry." Tilly raised a brow.

"We have four seasons in most places. " Sonic chuckled. "A year is three hundred and sixty five days long except there's an extra day every four years and there's four seasons to a year in this hemisphere so that makes you about thirty-two years old. Well... five thousand and thirty two," Sonic corrected himself, "give or take. That's much more believable than you being the same age as me."

"Wow! You look good for your age." The echidna laughed. "You must be a great-great-great-great-great-great-great," he inhaled deeply, "great-great-great grandma!"

“Thanks,” Sheptilah giggled, “yeah, I do look great for my age, huh?”

Sheptilah was careful to step over rocks and twigs that jutted out on the dirt path. "I never had children. Even if I wanted them I wouldn’t have had the chance. We were always at odds with the beasts.” She paused for a moment. “What's the life-expectancy of your average human in this time?" They were near the ocean now and the air smelled of it.

"Uh… about seventy years." Tails answered. "Why?"

"How old is Doctor Eggman?" The human tilted her head.

"Physically? I think he's in his forties. Emotionally he's about five or six." Amy smirked.

"Wonderful," Sheptilah chuckled, "We have about thirty years left of his nonsense."

The group soon arrived at the small village’s square. Though the lamps that poorly lit the area were in desperate need of maintenance, the cobblestone road was surprisingly well maintained, being pleasant to walk on even with the witch’s bare feet.

They came to a stop once they heard a strange noise in the distance that seemed to be rapidly approaching them. The source soon made itself apparent: it was Eggman on his little hovering vehicle with Orbot and Cubot in tow. He saw the group and came to an abrupt stop, throwing his lackeys forward and onto the ground with a loud metallic clatter.

"There you are!" The man shouted. "Don't run off like that." He scolded Sheptilah as if she were a child.

"Eggface!" Sonic dodged Cubot. "What do you want?"

"I don't want to deal with you right now, you filthy mutated rat," he spat, "I'm here for the lady." Ivo landed his vehicle and hopped off of it. His two robots groaned as they got back up.

"Where's your chinchilla friend? Are you hiding her in your pocket?" Sheptilah smirked. "Go away, I'm busy."

"Thunderbolt? I sent her back to Soumerca. I came to find you because GUN called saying they sent out a ship to pick us up right now. We're leaving for the ziggurat tonight." Eggman looked nervous and unhappy.

"Seriously?" Her shoulders drooped. "But why not during the day?"

Eggman sighed deeply. "Probably because it's too hot during the day. Come on, they'll be here soon."

Sheptilah turned to her new Mobian friends and bid them goodbye. "We will talk more later. I can't wait to see all the wonderful things you have to show me."

She turned and felt around the air with her hand until her nail snagged on something invisible and pulled open a portal to Eggman's lair large enough to accommodate the man’s weird flying machine.

Sheptilah closed the portal behind her and turned to Eggman. "There's some things I'd like to discuss with you before we leave." She motioned for him to follow her as she walked towards the meditation garden.

Orbot and Cubot followed the pair, their curiosity getting the better of them.

Sheptilah patted the ground next to her indicating she wanted him to sit next to her but he opted to stand instead. Orbot and Cubot took the hint and sat next to her.

"Sit, Doctor Eggman. I don't bite. Sit." The witch was getting annoyed. "Even your robots understood." She stretched her legs out in front of her and leaned back on her hands, resting her cheek on a bare shoulder.

"Ugh, fine, but these pants are dry-clean only." He sat cross-legged next to her and they looked out to the ocean. "What do you want?"

"I'm sorry for breaking your washbasin. I was scrying for my familiar as an impulse and I got scared of what I saw and… I guess it broke in my grip. I will fix it."

"Scrying? What's scrying?"

She used her magic to swirl up an image of a mirror floating in the air between her hands. "Staring deep into a reflective surface for divination."

"What did you see?"

"It was more like... feelings than things I saw." The smoky illusion changed to Mobius from high above in space.

"Seeing the planet from so high up… this and the feeling of falling. Like falling forever…" She sighed. "I don't remember the rest.” She was lying; she remembered it all but didn't want to think about it. She closed her hands to make the illusions vanish.

"Listen… I have to ask you why you are the way you are," she flexed her ankle until she heard it pop, "Because I don't understand you."

"What's to understand? I'm Doctor Ivo Eggman and I am going to rule the world!" He clenched his fist triumphantly and his robots clapped politely.

"For someone who hates Sonic and his friends you were awful gentle with him back in Soumerca," she sighed softly, "and for someone who loves his so-called Empire you seemed unaffected by all the bodies of your people in the base."

Eggman looked down and focused on a few blades of grass that were gently swaying in the breeze before responding. "I knew if I was rough with him you'd have slapped me upside the head."

"Oh, please!" She guffawed. "I've known you for about three days and even I can tell that's a lie; you're not afraid of me. But you're right, I would've smacked you."

"It's complicated."

“Let's play a game.” Shepitlah smirked playfully. "I'll tell you a secret if you tell me one of yours; I have a lot of secrets."

Now he was skeptical. "What sort of secrets could someone like you possess? What, have never once shaved your legs in your entire life?"

She looked off at the rolling waves glittering in the moonlight. "For years I've wanted to throw myself into the sea. I wanted to melt into the salty abyss and exist there forever."

"That's not much of a secret." He was expecting something more substantial than that. "Lots of women want to be mermaids."

"Ah, I guess I have to be more literal." She inhaled deeply. "For as long as I can remember I have wanted to die."

"Oh." He half-chuckled. "I'm not that kind of doctor, either. I cannot help you." That's when he noticed the raw-looking portion on her upper arm where the metal scraped her.

"I'm not asking for your help," she smiled at him, "I'm just saying. I never wanted the responsibility thrust on me. I knew we were all going to be wiped out by the beasts and I figured why draw it out?"

"What happens if you die while we're bonded?"

“I’m not sure. You might die with me, or you might not. Either way, I want this bond severed because I guarantee you that fighting these witch-eaters will kill me this time," she coughed, “that said, I think the planet might benefit from you being gone."

"Flattery will get you everywhere," he flashed a crooked smile, "don't die before the bond is removed, I have stuff planned for next week."

"Like what?"

"I want to expand my meditation garden and try that new meat-lovers pizza coming out at Meh Burger."

"Ugh, meat,” She shook her head. “I don’t know how you still have the stomach for that after what we saw yesterday.”

"Sheptilah, I sometimes forget that they're people and not robots but I always regret losing assets. It's bad for a company to lose workers but you have to compartmentalize and move on with your life."

While Eggman didn’t show much emotion beyond anger and haughtiness there was more to him that, as evidenced by his reaction.

"Assets, compartmentalize and move on," she repeated, the disdain in her voice second only that apparent in her poisonous violet eyes, "as if they were things."

"You know what I meant," he waved her off, "I didn't know any of them personally."

“You were going to leave Thunderbolt to die," she laid back and rested her hands behind her head, "and that's someone you know pretty well."

"If you weren't here she would've died. I'm honestly pretty sure she actually was dead for a moment there but you brought her back." He checked the time on his gauntlet and wondered where the hell the GUN ship was and why it was taking so long.

Cubot and Orbot grew bored with only getting half of the conversation and wandered off.

"You think too highly of me," she chuckled, "I can't do necromancy."

"That's a shame; I was hoping you could revive my mother." He pouted jokingly.

"I'm sorry.” Sheptilah frowned. “When did she pass?”

"No, she's still alive but I'd like to kill her more than once."

There was a pause before the witch understood and laughed. "You think you had it hard? I had two adoptive mothers. Two. I lived in a constant loop of 'go ask your mother'."

"Two moms?" He raised an eyebrow.

Sheptilah nodded. "Yeah. My biological mother was a friend of theirs. She was killed by a witch-eater not long after I was born so I was raised as the princess by queens Tiamatu and Lulu. When my moms retired I became queen."

"Wait. One of your moms was named Lulu? You have the names 'Sheptilah' and 'Tiamatu' and then Lulu?"

"Lulu means ‘well mixed person’, as in well made from fine clay. Your name is Ivo," she squinted at him, "Ivo. Eggman. Doesn’t mean anything in my language."

"I am named after a strong, vibrant species of tree planted in cemeteries to protect the dead!" He pushed out his chest defiantly. "What does your name even mean?"

"Curved yellow fruit." The stone translated literally.

"What?" He couldn't hold in his amusement and laughed so hard his glasses almost fell off his face. "Banana?” He was gasping for air between giggles. "Your name means Banana?"

"Oh, shut up," her face turned red, "bananas were rare to us and we liked the curved golden ones because they looked like a crescent moon during harvest season. They had big brown seeds in the middle that were not unlike my freckles!"

He wiped a single tear from his eye and wheezed. "Oh, that made my day."

She frowned at first and then started laughing, too. It was pretty funny. "You can just call me Tilly for short. It's what Rouge called me." She stood up and removed the glamour keeping her hair bobbed.

"Look." She pointed out to the sea. The GUN ship was slowly approaching.

Eggman straightened out his coat and brushed soil from his backside as he rose from his seated position.

"Finally!" He brought his gauntlet up and quickly began typing into it. Orbot appeared shortly afterward carrying a silver briefcase in one hand and a small box in the other. He presented both to the doctor.

“What's this?" Sheptilah asked, eyebrows upturned with apprehension.

"Just some provisions." The briefcase was heavy but he lifted it with ease. "Weapons and the like. I also have this for you."

Orbot handed the box to Sheptilah, who took it and opened it gingerly. Inside was a little pin in the shape of his logo.

“Since I can't communicate with you over radio I figured I could give you this so I can find you in the event we get separated."

Sheptilah affixed the pin to her leather top. "Thanks." She thought it looked a little ugly but felt it would be useful nonetheless due to the nature of the ziggurat's inner chambers.

The ship was black with the association's logo emblazoned on the side in a deep red and, unlike the carrier from the other day, was large and very imposing. The vehicle landed with a heavy thud and a series of loud hisses as its main hatch opened. A set of metal stairs extended unceremoniously from the opening and from them descended Boris Cabbot.

"Mr. Cabbot!" Sheptilah waved. "Nice to see you again." She smiled as she walked to join him.

Eggman sighed and followed after giving Orbot orders to keep the lair on lock-down while he was away.

The two were escorted into the ship by the director. It was surprisingly roomy on the inside, with only a few soldiers sitting strapped in next to one another in full combat gear. She couldn't see their faces behind their alien-looking helmets but still recognized the red fox from the other day.

"But where is-" Sheptilah was interrupted by a familiar voice.

"Yoo-hoo!" Rouge called attention to herself. She and Shadow were strapped in next to one another while Omega was fastened directly to the wall, his massive weight meant to help maintain the ship’s balance. The two Mobians wore matching jackets, a fact which Sheptilah found cute despite every other operative aboard wearing the same uniform.

"There you are! And our grumpy hedgehog friend," she sniffed the air, "someone smells nice."

Rouge shot Shadow a smug look. "Told you."

"You're wearing that to the desert at night?" Cabbot gestured to all of Sheptilah. "Won't you freeze?"

"I don't have anything else," she shrugged, "I'll be okay. The chill at night is not that bad."

  
\------------------------------------ ✫☽ ☀ ☾✫ ----------------------------------

  
"I admit I was wrong!" Sheptilah was hit with frigid air the moment she stepped off the ship. Each of the witch’s shaky breaths were visible as her teeth chattered wildly

"The ambient temperature is four degrees Celsius." Shadow walked past and zipped up his jacket. "Slightly above freezing."

“I envy your chest fluff." Sheptilah squinted at him as she wrapped her bare arms with hair, the only thing she could think to do in this situation.

Rouge followed the pair while looking around with a sensor. Three GUN operatives exited the ship and set up monitoring software around its entrance.

The devices were meant to scan for the Chaos Emerald believed to be inside of the ziggurat as well as for any other abnormalities within the immediate area.

Omega descended from the ship and stomped about as well but ultimately found nothing of interest.

It was a clear night and the sky was illuminated by countless shining stars and a beautifully glowing moon. What remained of the ziggurat looked so small compared to what Sheptilah last saw, which only felt like a few days ago to her, with many of its layers and stone houses missing. Time was a cruel mistress.

The ziggurat itself was made up of six layers, each about half as tall as the one it was sitting on. A long and crumbling stairway led straight to the ziggurat’s top and from there each individual layer was accessible through a series of smaller ramps that connected them all. There were stains running down the sides of the ziggurat where artificial waterfalls once flowed and the ruined remains of architecture denoted where homes and businesses once stood.

Cabbot elected to remain on the ship where he could monitor from on high while Hope herself chose to stay at the fortress.

"The ziggurat regulated its own temperature back then," her teeth chattered, "it was always beautifully mild." She sniffled, choking back painful tears.

"Oh for the love of-”Eggman stepped off the ship and plopped his jacket on Sheptilah's shoulders like a cape. He then rapidly rubbed her upper arms to warm them. He felt pity for the poor woman but began to regret this act of kindness after he began to feel a chill.

"Thank you." Was all she could manage to squeak out before pushing her arms into its sleeves. She wasn't expecting it to be so heavy, but it was warm and for that she was grateful. "I think I could live in this coat. It’s so big!" She hugged herself and snuggled into it.

"Aww, how cute!" Rouge teased. "What a gentleman." Rouge's ears were getting numb from the cold so she rubbed the tips with her fingers to keep them warm

"I've always been a gentleman!" Ivo huffed, "have I ever been untoward with a lady?" He paused. "Don't answer that."

"There's something I have to tell you about the ziggurat before we enter." Sheptilah giggled nervously.

"Oh, here we go." Shadow groaned.

“So… the inner chambers move. They shift around constantly when someone is inside. It's to protect our giant cauldron, our family grimoire and, among other things, the royal coffers but if you stick by me things will be okay since I am the queen and this is my house."

She tried to stand confidently but the cold made her hunch over and shiver instead.

"We're all going to die," Eggman switched to an overly dramatic voice, "I never saw Paris."

“Royal coffers?" Rouge perked up. "You mean like gold and jewels and other valuables?"

"Well, y-yes. I have no use for most of it anymore so you can keep whatever you find." She coughed.

"How do we get inside?" Her ears stood straight up and her grin was so wide it almost took up her entire face.

"Up the stairs, to the great temple, where there is a secret passageway that leads inside." Sheptilah pointed to a few lonely columns that stood at the very top of the ziggurat.

Rouge grabbed the witch by the upper arm and began sprinting up the stairs. It wasn’t every day that the bat was granted permission to loot a queen’s coffers for everything she could carry and she was not about to squander this opportunity. "Let's go, let's go! I want those jewels!"


	13. Levels

The building’s summit was as long as a football field and twice as wide. Getting to the top would require a very long trek for anyone that lacked wings.

"Rouge," Shadow sighed, "you're forgetting something." He gestured to an operative who was holding headsets for everyone.

“Oh, right!" Rouge stopped in her tracks and sashayed over to the man, her gloved hand extended eagerly. She inspected the object for a moment before clasping it to her ear: it had a camera that came complete with a small microphone embedded into a delta-shaped metal plate that rested flat against the forehead.

"This is so we can see what you see," the unnamed fox operative explained, "and this one is yours. Apologies for not having a spare uniform for you, Sheptilah. We dropped the ball on that one."

Given Sheptilah's known iron allergy, her unit was made with a thin ceramic coating on the underside so it didn't irritate her skin. He gently traded her bronze circlet for the iron one and helped her put in the earpiece.

Eggman opened his briefcase and assembled a smaller version of the laser he used to blast through the metal walls of the Soumercian base. The sleek black weapon had a brightly glowing strip of red light traveling throughout its frame that indicates that it was charged and ready to fire. He put turned on its safety and holstered it to his belt.

“Can you hear me?" Hope's sweet voice rang in each of their headsets.

"Hope?" Eggman was surprised. "You're still with Team Dark?"

" _Aie?_ " Tilly spoke. " _D'jen mi?_ "

"What?" Hope ignored Eggman. "Oh, that must be Sheptilah."

"She said 'Hello, can you hear me'.” Shadow translated. "This is going to be annoying."

"Don't worry about translating everything she says. I am more focused on recording the visuals and I can see all of your cameras are working; that is the most important part. Can you hear us, Director Cabbot?"

"Yes, I can." He answered over their coms.

On Hope's screen were five different squares, each representing an individual's camera. They were all properly labeled with their names except for Sheptilah's which was simply labeled 'witch' and Eggman's which was labeled 'jackass'. Omega had a built in camera and light, so he did not require any additional gear.

"We are also recording all conversations for posterity, so don't say anything you'll regret." She warned them.

"I have something to say." Omega said.

Rouge and Shadow shot him a pointed look.

"Fine." The robot gave up. He was going to ask if they _really_ needed Doctor Eggman to come along.

"Please, can we go now?" Sheptilah's fingers and lips were slightly blue. She turned to the ziggurat and lifted a shaky hand, feeling for a snag in the air to open a portal to the top. When she failed to find anything she dejectedly placed her numb finger into her mouth to warm it up before trying again.

"What are you doing?" Rouge raised an eyebrow. "Opening a portal?"

“Yes! I'm trying to open a portal to the top so we don't have to walk all the way up there." She felt around again and found her target, quickly pulling open a portal large enough to accommodate even Omega.

"There are gaps between our dimension and others. If I can find the gaps, which I feel for with my fingers, I can open doors that cover vast distances but only to places I’ve been." Her shaking legs made stepping through the portal difficult but she immediately found herself feeling warm and safe once she did.

The moment Sheptilah’s feet touched the temple’s stone floor, many rocky torches lit up with blue flames. The group could see the temple’s eerie light emanating from the portal and reluctantly followed the witch through it.

Sheptilah bent down and touched the floor. White smoke billowed forth from her fingertips and quickly enshrouded the temple in a dense fog.As the fog dispersed, the area was revealed to have been restored it to its former glory by way of a powerful glamour: the cracked sandstone floor was replaced with smooth tiles of lapis lazuli, each decorated with intricate arrangements of gemstones that matched the relative positions of stars, planets and constellations that have long since shifted.

The crumbling marble pillars were restored as well, their pristine white, contrasting the deep hues of the tiles below. They were arranged in such a way that suggested they were used for keep track of time over long periods. Additionally, an opulent fountain appeared summit’s center, an approximation of crystal clear water and flowing from its many spouts.

The rest of the ziggurat remained unchanged. She only needed to remember where the hidden entrance was

"First class transportation," Rouge chirped, "I can get used to this." She gasped at how pretty the floor was and marveled at the gemstones in it, but frowned when she realized she could easily kick away the smoke holding the illusion in place.

Sheptilah sighed wistfully. Actually repairing such a massive building would require the help of a powerful familiar.

Eggman turned around, absolutely enchanted. _What a gorgeous place_ , he admitted to himself. _Perhaps I’ll base a park attraction on it._

"Are the cameras working?" Rouge asked. "I hope you can see this! It's breathtaking!"

"The cameras are operational." Cabbot's voice spoke to them.

"You don't sound very impressed..." The bat tapped her camera with a finger.

"Can you see the magical illusion that Sheptilah has put up?" Shadow turned his head. "It's quite remarkable."

"We can’t see the magic. It must not be able to be recorded with cameras." Hope responded. "Looks unchanged to us."

"We slept out here in the temple to charge at night under the stars. Some of my best memories come from this summit." Sheptilah could feel the sadness welling up in her throat.

"Witch, I have a question." Shadow looked at her with suspicion. "Why can you not just open a portal to the inner chambers where the grimoire is?"

"Because they move," she closed the portal behind Omega and gave Eggman his coat back, "and if we open portals and wind up inside something solid it would be instant death." She interlocked her fingers as if to emphasize her point. She picked a flame bare-handed off of one of the pillars. "Follow me. Grab one if you'd like, they won't hurt you."

Rouge tentatively reached up to feel the temperature of the flames and felt a comforting warmth but no burning. She blew onto it and the flame did not shift with the gust. The bat then gingerly picked it up with her fingers and understood what it was.

"It's a will-o'-the-wisp! There's will-o'-the-wisps here!" Rouge was very excited, toes barely touching the ground and gliding by her wings. "These things lead people to fortune and treasure! This is already the best mission ever!"

"I think it's just a flame," Shadow picked one up and 'juggled' it between his hands, "like a night light."

"So which is it?" Eggman asked the witch.

"I don't know, they've always appeared when someone was at the temple at night." Sheptilah shrugged. "But you could _both_ be right."

"Or you could all be wrong," Eggman looked over one with curiosity. He made a mental note to sneak one back to his lair for studying on the way out.

Sheptilah pointed to a large stone slab on the other side of the temple, still a fair distance away. “That is where we performed our executions. Just under the beheading altar should be the entrance to the core."

"Executions?" Eggman's throat suddenly hurt. "Hey…" He hoped she was not serious.

"I only oversaw the beheading of five people in my life; you're fine. These were individuals that committed heinous crimes. Crimes like murdering your own familiar to summon a world-ending demon." Sheptilah shrugged it off. "You know, people who really deserved it."

"He's summoned a few world-ending beings," Shadow pointed out with a smirk, "so if you want to make it an even six…"

Eggman's eyes grew wide with horror. " _Shadow!_ "

"Did you ever murder someone in order to summon them?" The witch raised her eyebrow at the extremely nervous man.

"No," Eggman huffed, "I never killed anyone." His bald head was damp with sweat.

"Then you wouldn't get death." Sheptilah said curtly. Ivo sighed with relief.

"You'll get a lifetime of hard labor," she flashed him a sharp smile, "as a reward for your treachery."

" _An even six?_ " Rouge scolded under her breath. "We're being recorded."

His only response was an uncaring shrug.

"Your highness- please have mercy." Eggman took her small hand in his and feigned begging. "I learned my lesson the first time I tried to take over the world with unknown magic. I'm not doing it with force anymore."

Shadow could almost feel Hope rolling her eyes over the intercom.

"Oh?" The witch smiled coyly. "Haha... You're so cute when you're nervous and begging for your life. I was just teasing.”

"Cute?" Eggman squinted.

"Yes, we had humor. I'm going to fix as much as I can without hurting anyone, I promise." She took her hand back and turned to the stone.

Sheptilah dispelled the illusion and was horrified to see that the butcher's block was missing as she stood at the mouth of a large hole.

"It looks like someone got here before we did," Rouge spoke into her com, "A very long time ago."

"I expected damage but given the protective nature of the ziggurat we should be alright. The grimoire should be safe." Tilly said as she peered into the hole using the will-o'-wisp. The blue light revealed a crumbling stairwell that spiraled downward and was much too narrow for Omega to enter.

"Requesting permission to obliterate small opening so that I may fit." The robot raised his arm as if to punch.

"Permission denied." Shadow shook his head. "It's too risky."

"I will remain outside fuming with disappointment." 

"Sorry we can't take you with us." Rouge frowned. She was hoping Omega could clear their path of walls and other obstacles.

"Don't descend yet." Cabbot's voice called into their coms, "We're unable to get a proper reading on the Chaos Emerald’s location."

"It could be the magic interfering." Shadow suggested. "It's happened in the past."

"Our sensors picked up the Emerald’s energy in the area but now that we’re here they’re saying it’s located in solid rock five miles below where you’re standing. Hopefully I don’t need to explain how that’s not possible." Hope was annoyed.

We are definitely gonna die inside this rock." Eggman's mustache drooped and then perked up. "Wait!" He started typing away at his gauntlet but was disheartened to see the magic was affecting his gear as well.

"Why don't you have faith in me?" Sheptilah sounded genuinely hurt by the doctor's half-joking comment. He felt a pang in his chest and believed it was the bond punishing him for being mean; to him it made more sense than labeling it as 'guilt'.

"Sheptilah, is there anything below the ziggurat?" Rouge asked her.

"No, it's built on solid sandstone. There's nothing under it; everything is inside it." The witch shook her head. "Unless a giant hole opened while I was asleep."

"According to Sheptilah there's nothing under the building," Shadow sighed, "we'll find what we need come hell or high water."

"We'll keep you posted. You're clear to descend." Cabbot could be heard typing while he was speaking.

"I'll go first." Sheptilah stepped into the opening. Her bare feet met piles of soft sand on the steps which caused her to frown. Seeing her home in such a state was greatly upsetting and if she were alone she would’ve cried.

Eggman quickly followed behind her, sucking in his gut to get through the small opening. Shadow and Rouge descended next, both holding their wisps close. Something about the structure made Shadow highly agitated, his spines bristling at every little sound.

"We see you moving downward," Cabbot spoke, "good. The emerald seems to have shifted positions as well. Our sensors show it bouncing rapidly near the center of the building but otherwise staying put."

Shadow grunted in acknowledgement.

Despite its dominating presence, the ziggurat was much larger on the inside than it was on the outside. After several minutes of carefully winding down the staircase, the group came across a doorway that seemed to lead into absolute darkness

"Stay close," Tilly warned, "The internal lighting should have come on but…" She looked at her wisp. "It seems I will have to do it manually." She handed her wisp to Eggman and touched the ground.

The magic from her Oracle Stone was visible as a faint glow that gradually spread to each corner of the room before suddenly becoming as bright as the sun. They all shielded their eyes from the blinding incandescence.

The light dimmed as quickly as it expanded and revealed a room that was totally bare, its only inhabitant a startled scorpion that quickly skittered across the floor and out through another doorway.

"There used to be furniture in here," Tilly frowned, "Wooden chairs and a table…" Her eyes darted in every direction. "There used to be paintings on the walls, too."

"Our concern isn't furniture, Overlander." Shadow spat. "Let's move on."

"I'm just stating a fact. What is your problem with me?" Sheptilah was greatly upset by his abrasiveness. "And is Overlander a _slur?_ "

“Several things about you bother me." Shadow nodded towards Eggman. "Should I list them alphabetically?"

“If you think you're so much better than me, why don't you go on ahead without us?" Sheptilah gestured an open hand toward the black doorway. "Go ahead and get yourself killed."

"Please. I'm here to make sure _you_ don't get killed." The black hedgehog was feeling particularly sharp-tongued today.

"You're mighty sassy for someone who barely comes past my waist." She stuck out her hip. "You are so full of hatred for someone so small."

"Enough," Rouge stepped in, "let's continue on." She pointed to their coms again as a reminder that they are being watched. "And no, it isn't a slur."

"It sounds like it is with the way he says it." Sheptilah balled her fists. Eggman laid his hand on her bare shoulder and gently squeezed it to calm her down. She was startled by the sudden contact and squeaked.

"Tilly," he whispered, "It really isn't a slur. I'll explain what it means later. Come on… lead the way."

The tension was palpable; Eggman made sure to place as many people between him and black hedgehog as he could. Sheptilah walked through the black doorway and lit it with magic. It was just as empty and run-down as the last.

* * *

"They're going to kill each other." Hope spoke directly into Cabbot's com.

"I hope not," he responded to her, "at least Rouge and Doctor Eggman are being level-headed, surprisingly."

* * *

Sheptilah inhaled deeply to calm herself down. “We still have several more levels to go before we start getting to the shifting rooms. The next room is… _was_... a lounge with a pool. Off to its sides were my room and my mothers' rooms, and then after that it becomes a maze."

" _Mothers_ , huh?" Rouge smiled. "Did you ever get caught in a constant loop of 'go ask your mom'?"

"Yes!" Sheptilah nodded. "How'd you know?"

"Just a hunch," the bat winked, "it's still a thing today."

The group soon arrived at the broken down remains of the lounge. The room was dotted with graffiti that was crudely scratched into its wall with rocks and all that remained of the pool was a large hole in the ground filled with dust and sand.

"I can read these." The witch placed her hand on one of the scratches. "My stone is telling me they're from centuries ago."

"What's it say?" Rouge was very curious. "Any maps to treasure?"

Sheptilah was stifling a laugh. "It's a fart joke in Sumerian. 'Why do girls always fart in their husband's laps?' I don't recognize the letters on the one on the far end but it says 'Kilroy Was Here' and there's a little face."

"That's in English," Eggman nodded, "Our language."

"Ugh. That means people have been trashing my house forever…"

"And that people have been making fart jokes since the dawn of time." Rouge chuckled.

Sheptilah worked her way around the graffiti and got to what remained of her room, lighting it with her magic. It, much like the others, was totally empty and devoid of even any graffiti.

"Why are we in here?" Eggman looked around, holding the wisp out to light his way.

"Because my stuff is probably still here." Tilly walked up to a large stone slab and laid her palms flat against it.

"This room is empty," Ivo said, "Unless you can see things we can't?"

“Back up." She pulled the long stone out of the wall with magic and set it on the ground with a very heavy thud. The witch visibly hesitated for a moment before climbing into the hole, disappearing inside.

"Please don't get stuck!" Rouge shouted.

A feeling of intense dread began to build within Shadow's body. The witch described herself as being claustrophobic and yet here she was worming her way deep inside a wall. He began to wonder if she was leading them into a trap.

Tilly's heart raced as she sifted through ancient piles of dust and debris in the space inside the wall. She eventually hit something solid and shimmied back out with a large box in hand. She shook the filth that covered her off as best as she could before turning her attention back to her prize, frowning slightly. The wooden box did not age well and she worried for its contents.

"What's all this?" Rouge gasped. "Are these the jewels you spoke of?" Her wings stiffened with excitement.

"My secret stash of stuff." She set the trunk down on the stone she removed from the wall and opened it. Inside was a very dirty collection of things: a cup made of beautifully carved marble, what looked like a wand with a crescent moon at the end and a long, sheathed dagger with rubies embedded in its handle.

"A chalice for drinking ritual potions out of." She held up the cup and tucked it into her 'hair' for storage.

"This is my boline," she held up the moon-shaped 'wand', "Its blade is made of the sharpest, purest silver. I cut things with this."

"And finally my athame…" She unsheathed the rusty iron blade. "For ritual cutting. It was a lot prettier when it was new." She re-sheathed it and put it in her hair like the other items.

Under those objects was a small pouch filled with pink armadillo scales. She immediately put it away without explanation.

"Where exactly are you sticking those?" Ivo stroked the back of her head. "Where does your hair go, exactly?"

" _Please_ stop touching me." She pushed his hand away. "I'm using magic, Ivo. Now let's go get that grimoire. It's huge so we can't miss it. It's a book that's almost as tall as I am."

"And the jewels!" Rouge reminded her.

After some meandering, the group finally arrived at the doorway to the shifting rooms. Sheptilah stuck her arm through and it felt like it was caught in honey. She took her wisp back from Eggman and held it up to the darkness but it simply vanished into the black and illuminated nothing.

Shadow's spines visibly bristled, alerting Rouge. His ears swiveled in all directions as they tracked sounds no one else seemed to hear.

"Shadow? Our sensors are showing your heart rate is accelerating. What's happening?" Hope spoke into his earpiece. "Hello?"

"I'm fine," he lied, "just alert." He could hear the sounds of children screaming for their lives.

Rouge shifted uncomfortably on the balls of her feet, "I hear music… dance music. What's going on?"

"Your gear is starting to crackle." Cabbot spoke. "You're cutting out. All of you."

"I don't hear that," Eggman pressed his fingers against the semi-solid blackness, "I hear whirring and heels clicking…"

"Hello?" Cabbot's voice was surrounded by static. "H-he -l l- o"

"Huh?" Eggman tapped his earpiece with his finger, "Hello? Is someone trying to talk?"

"This isn't right." Sheptilah took a deep breath and stuck her head through the doorway. She opened her eyes and tried to make sense of what she was seeing. She was peering into a small room that was a solid, untextured white on all sides and lit so brightly that she struggled to keep her gaze fixed.

She could make out what appeared to be her own head sticking out of the black on the other end of the room, except horribly disfigured. 

"What are you so afraid of?" She heard her voice call from the other side. "Sheptilah." The figure pulled itself from the black and showed that the rest of her body fared no better than her face.

Sheptilah pulled her head out of the blackness, visibly unwell. She swallowed hard and stuck her head back in yet found the room to be conspicuous in its emptiness; anything she previously saw, the harsh lighting along with the other version of herself, had vanished and instead was now replaced by freshly-painted Nannaic figures and writing that now adorned walls. Additionally, two doorways appeared with one seeming to lead to a beach and the other leading to deep space.

She steeled herself stepped into the black, pulling Eggman inside with her. She was squeezing his hand so tightly that she almost threatened to pop his fingers right off.

"What happened?" He could feel his heartbeat throbbing in his fingertips.

Shadow and Rouge cautiously stepped in after pair. The noises seemed to stop once everyone crossed the threshold and they all breathed a collective sigh a relief.

“Hello?" Their coms rang. It was Hope trying to get in contact with them again.

"We're here." Rouge responded.

“Sensors are showing you all five miles underground now," Hope sighed, "needless to say, I’m just going to disregard that."

"We're definitely not that far down." Eggman spoke. "Can you see the doors?" He turned to these doorways that seemed to lead elsewhere.

“No. Looks like visuals are totally cut off." Hope was getting frustrated. "The only cam still up is Omega's."

"What do they look like? Describe them for us." Cabbot was trying to reconnect visual contact by rebooting some of the laptops.

"One looks like a white sand beach that stretches out forever. There's a blue sky and no clouds." Something about the beach seemed off to Eggman. "It doesn't look real, like really bad video game graphics. The other looks like it leads to the edge of the Milky Way."

"The door we came in through disappeared," Shadow banged his fist on the wall, "totally gone. Where is the Chaos Emerald, Hope?"

"Five miles above you according to these stupid sensors." They could hear the girl typing, "Omega's sensors are telling me the same thing."

The witch looked around with confusion, nervously biting her thumbnail. "This isn't how it's supposed to be. The doors aren't supposed to disappear behind us. This is all wrong."

"Which door should we take, Sheptilah?" Rouge reached towards the door leading to the beach and was unable to push her hand through.

Sheptilah clutched Eggman's hand for dear life. "We shouldn't take either door." She felt around the back of her head for her grimoire and flipped through the book searching for answers.

"Nothing... nothing... ugh." She stomped her foot with frustration. "I'm sorry. I don't know. I can't even dispel this nonsense without the family grimoire, either."

It was then the following cuneiform appeared above the door leading to the beach:

⋰⦁ ↑ →⦁ ⸬

⋰⦁ ⦁⦁ ↙↙ ⇃ ↑

While the following appeared above the door leading to space:

↑↑ ↡ ⤋ ↑ ⤘

⦁⥇↚

"Tilly," Eggman nudged her, "look." He pointed to the writing.

"That's _my_ language," she squinted, "those are our phonetic names."

"It wants us to go through specific doors?" Rouge looked over it curiously and took a photo of the writing with her phone, "which one is mine?"

"You and Eggman are labelled for the space door. Shadow and I would go through the beach door." She frowned and put her grimoire back in her hair.

"What happens if I don't agree to that?" Shadow crossed his arms.

"Well, when I touched this portal it wouldn't let me through so I assume it's the same for you." Rouge shrugged.

Shadow confidently strides towards the space portal and found it just as impassable as Rouge theorized.

"Let us out!" Sheptilah demanded of the ziggurat. "Lead us to the grimoire. It's my right as queen."

No response.

"Let us out!" She shouted again. This time there was a response: the ziggurat rumbled ominously in response.

"Calm down!" Rouge tried to soothe her. "You're gonna bring the place down."

"I'm _not_ doing this." Sheptilah jumped back.

"The walls!" Shadow shouted. The walls were closing in on them at an alarming pace.

"What's happening?" Hope was shouting into their earpieces. "What's happening!?"

"We're about to get crushed to death. Go! Go!" Eggman pushed Rouge through the space door and ran in after her.

Sheptilah was in a full-blown panic, her claustrophobia making her freeze in place.

"Come _on_ , Overlander." Shadow pulled her towards their door by the wrist. "Snap out of it, damn it!" He flung her through the portal and stepped in just before the walls closed in on them.


	14. In Memoriam

**Dreamscape 1: I Saw The Sign**

Eggman tumbled through the portal and landed hard. The doctor scanned the area as he slowly got his bearings, mystified by what he saw. The room appeared to be situated on the edge of the Milky Way with the vastness of space visible before him and in all other directions. He cautiously stepped forward and his footsteps echoed as if he was walking on glass. He tried to find some celestial bodies he recognized as he walked but found none.

"Rouge?" He called into the glittering void. "Rouge? Are you okay?"

"I'm down here," her voice echoed from above him, "why are you on the ceiling?"

Eggman looked up and saw the bat. "Actually, you're on the ceiling to me." He waved.

"Hello?" Their earpieces crackled with the sound of Hope’s voice. "H-Hello? Rouge... Eggman? Somebody? Hello?"

"Hello?" Eggman called into his piece. "I hear you, Hope."

“What's going on? Everyone vanished from our radar, visuals are blacked out on your end and we can’t get in contact Shadow or the witch either."

"We stepped into another room. These are illusions, I think." Rouge flew ‘up’ to join Eggman. A large spaceship appeared from a wormhole beneath them, making the room rumble.

"That's… that's one of my ships," Eggman pointed, "from the Starlight Carnival." The faint sounds of Europop could be heard emanating from the ship.

"So remind me again why your witch girlfriend had to drag you along for this?" Rouge smirked.

"We're _bonded._ " He used air quotes. "She claims she doesn't know how to sever it without the family book of spells. I honestly cannot wait to be rid of her." He walked slowly, feeling for any invisible walls with his feet. His headache grew worse. He wondered if it was the separation that caused the pain and if Sheptilah could feel it, too.

"What, you don't like having a cute lady living with you?" Rouge elbowed him gently. "You're both on a first-name basis."

"Not when she's yelling at me all the time, no." The pressure building behind his eyes made it feel as if they were about to shoot out of their sockets. "And I don't think she _has_ a last name."

"We need to find a door out of here," Rouge looked around, "cover your ears, Eggman."

He put his gun away and covered his ears tightly with his palms.

Rouge inhaled deeply and let out an echoing screech. She listened intently for the noise to bounce back off of a wall but nothing came. It was as if her voice disappeared into the void.

“One more try." She inhaled and tried to screech again but all that came from her throat was a strained squeak. Rouge coughed to clear her lungs before trying yet again but her third attempt fared no better. The bat lost her voice.

Fleets of space frigates appeared, increasing the music's volume to deafening levels, hurting Rouge's very sensitive ears. The intensity with which the ground rumbled also increased, nearly knocking Eggman square off his feet. He pulled his gun out of his pocket and fired it straight ahead but the laser only traveled a few feet before abruptly freezing in place and dissipating as if it were made from vapor.

"What... what the hell?" Rouge muttered to herself.

Eggman stowed his gun away again as he hummed along to the music. "I know this song…"

" _'I saw the sign- and it opened up my mind…'_ That's Ace of Base. Old musical group from decades ago." He nodded.

"God, you're old." She joked, barely able to get the words out as her voice was now as rough as sandpaper.

“What happened to your voice?"

"I don't know," she choked, "this has never happened before."

"Hello?" Hope yelled into her mic. "Hello?!" But no response. They couldn't hear her tinny shouts over the thrumming music.

Rouge saw something flick out of the corner of her eye. More ships appeared under them and the room shook again. The bright pulsing lights made it difficult for her to lock onto whatever it was that was moving.

Wait. Where were their will-o'-the-wisps?

That's when the floor began to crack. The fractures started out small but soon enough began to spread at a pace that threatened to send the two plummeting into the sea of stars below. Rouge grabbed onto his Eggman’s arm and tried to take flight but found herself unable to lift the man; his feet were rooted in place by an unseeable force.

_What are you so afraid of, Rouge the Bat?_

_What are you so afraid of, Ivo Kintobor?_

The two jerked their heads in unison as the voice entered their minds. Meanwhile, the object that previously caught Rouge's attention bounced off a series of invisible walls at breakneck speeds before lunging straight at them. The bat recognized what it was when it was inches from her face.

It was a witch-eater.

The walls shattered with a deafening crash and all went black.

**Dreamscape 2: Concrete Angel**

Shadow clung to the portal’s doorway when he saw how high up he was. His tail was pressed uncomfortably against the solid stone, sending painful throbs up his spine. He took a deep breath and calculated that he was about seven stories up. The hedgehog was struggling to maintain his grip on the doorway’s sharp edges and felt as if he was going to fall forward at any moment.

Shadow could make out Sheptilah’s prone figure below him. The woman seemingly landed head-first and was partially buried in sand.

"Sheptilah!?" He called. "Please tell me you are not dead. I am going to be _very_ upset with you if you’re dead."

"What?" She pulled her head out of the sand. "Dead? We're not dead." She looked up and saw him struggling to stay on a ledge only a few inches wide.

She stood, brushed herself off and held up her hands. "Jump down; I'll catch you!"

"I am fine!" He lied. "However, the impact of my weight would crush you!"

"I'm going to catch you with _magic!_ " She stomped her foot. "I'm not going to let you stab me to death by catching you with my bare arms!"

"I don't need your help!" He gazed into the distance and saw that there was nothing in all directions. Even the sun was conspicuously absent. He looked down for a brief moment and then leapt, landing next to the witch as softly as if he stepped from a curb. Sheptilah began to make a snide remark but was cut off by a painful ringing from her headset. The woman removed the offending article and unceremoniously tossed it into the sand.

Shadow was happy to be on the ground again until he looked up and noticed a massive wall immediately to their left. The wall, a pristine white, appeared to stretch infinitely in all directions and did not cast a shadow despite its now dominating presence which was a fact that greatly unnerved the hedgehog.

"Where did this wall come from?" He touched it and was rewarded with his arm going numb. He quickly withdrew it and the feeling returned.

Sheptilah turned to face him, still spitting sand out of her mouth. "It was here when I arrived."

"No, it wasn't," he knocked on it, "this was not here when I was up on the ledge. There was nothing in all directions."

"Yes, well, I promise you it didn't appear the moment you landed." She crossed her arms, "I hate this. I hate feeling so useless and lost."

"Then be useful and find the portal to the next room." He grunted at her. His earpiece then began to crackle and pop much like Sheptilah’s and after fruitlessly tinkering with it for a moment he eventually removed the device altogether.

"Let's walk and see what we find." Sheptilah bobbed her hair with a glamour. "At least it's not hot like _my_ desert."

"Fine." Shadow was already dreading having to dig sand out of his skates again.

The pair walked away from the wall but without any landmarks it was impossible to tell how far they traveled. Sheptilah wanted to speak with Shadow to learn more about him but felt it was smarter to let him initiate conversation.

The silence was oppressive. Sheptilah begged in her heart for any kind of noise; a bird calling or sand shifting in the breeze. Anything!

Shadow, for his part, was counting his paces as a way to keep track of distance traveled. He felt more tired than he ever did in his life and after ten thousand steps he finally requested a break. The pair stopped to rest for a moment and much to his great horror the wall was still there behind them, only a few feet away.

"What the hell…?" He growled. " _Witch_ …"

"Hm?" Sheptilah looked over her shoulder to see what he was complaining about.

"We didn't move at all," he swallowed hard, "We had to have traveled at least _five_ miles and the wall is still here."

"It might not be the same wall." Sheptilah looked around but without markers it was hard to determine. Every stone in the wall was identical in size, shape and color.

“What if we try to go over the wall? The ziggurat is a finite space; there has to be _some_ logic to this room." Shadow was rapidly losing patience.

"I want to try something first." She held out her arm and gently traced a line from her elbow to her wrist using her index finger. Her skin split and the wound welled with blood.

"What are you doing?" Shadow was horrified.

"Marking." She pressed her arm flat against the wall to leave behind a large horizontal streak followed by two more presses at mirrored angles to form an arrow pointing to the left. The wound quickly healed itself once she was done. "See?"

"That is disgusting. _You_ are disgusting." He scolded her. "You are so reckless with your own body." His arm felt itchy just by watching her.

"What, are you hemophobic?" She was offended by his disgust.

"No but I do not trust people that play with their own blood so much." He felt a knot forming in his stomach.

"I don't have paint on me," she shrugged, "and witch blood cannot be washed off easily. This way the damn ziggurat can't undo it and we have a marker to gauge distance with."

"Oh," he sighed, "I suppose that's reasonable."

"It doesn't hurt, I promise." She smiled sincerely. "Let's try again. You wanted to go over the wall?"

"Yes." He looked up at it. It was maybe thirty feet high and could be surmounted with a good running start.

She used magic to stir up the sand and molded it into surfboard-shaped plate of glass that was about four inches thick.

"What are you doing?" He squinted at her.

"We flew on these," she stepped on it and it levitated, "though typically it was made of stone."

Shadow raised a skeptical eyebrow.

  
“I was possibly the most skilled dune drifter around in my time, I’ll have you know," she offered Shadow her hand, "though glass heats up quickly so I probably shouldn’t go too fast.”

"Dune drifter, huh?" He hesitated but eventually took her hand and she lifted him onto the board. She scooted forward so he could stand behind her and hold onto her waist.

The jostling of the board as it levitated off the ground made Shadow cling just the slightest bit tighter. The only thing he feared more than heights was not being in control.

The board continued to rise until it reached the top of the wall, prompting the two to peer over it. The view on the other side was identical to the one just below. Even the arrow Sheptilah pressed into the wall was mirrored.

Sheptilah slipped off her anklet and let it drop. When it fell on one side it appeared on the other. She looked at the vista before her and a reflection of the two bobbled in the same way heat makes the air dance.

"It's a mirror. Both sides of the wall are the same. So much for the idea of going over it.”

“We’ve wasted enough time,” Shadow complained. “I'm getting us out of here and if we get smashed between two walls so be it. Chaos Control!" He expected to warp but nothing happened.

“Chaos Control!" He tried again. And again. And again. "Damn it." Shadow huffed.

"I'm going to feel for a portal, see if we can't at least get out and start over." Sheptilah combed her hand through the air but found nothing.

Sheptilah lowered the board to be parallel to the ground and pushed it forward using her foot. She took a few glances back to make sure that the bloody arrow she left behind was disappearing behind them and once she she was confident that they were actually moving she propelled them forward in earnest.

Shadow was beginning to panic. They were stuck deep within the ziggurat’s shifting chambers with no supplies and no feasible means of escape. Shadow, being the Ultimate Life Form, could survive for months without sustenance but Sheptilah would only last between three to five days and though he disliked the woman he didn’t enjoy the thought of her starving to death and then being forced to watch her decompose.

"Is this normal?" He asked her.

"Is _what_ normal?"

"The ziggurat doing this to the rooms."

"No, it isn't. It just shifted rooms. We stored a lot of junk in them. Huge jugs of water, seeds, things like that. It discouraged people from stealing our stuff and the witch-eaters from finding our most precious things." Sheptilah wished her mothers were here to help her, "I can't even ask it to just deliver the grimoire to me. Some queen I am," the witch sighed, " _was_."

"How long can you live without food, Sheptilah?" He thought he saw something move across the dunes but decided it was nothing.

"Five thousand years." She joked to cut the tension; she knew why he was asking.

"I'm serious," he groaned, "how long can you survive?"

"Five days."

"And how long could we possibly be trapped here?"

"I don't know but I will not let us die here." She slowed down and screeched to a halt when the arrow came back into view. Her anger and frustration boiled over in that moment.

"Ziggurat!" Sheptilah shouted skyward. "Where is the door?! As your queen I demand you take us to my grimoire!"

"Don't antagonize it." Shadow growled. "It may try to crush us again."

"Where there are walls there is a door." She winked.

"Not always." Shadow frowned.

"Alright, fine. Where there are walls we can _make_ a door!"

Shadow suddenly thrust his arm out to silence her. His ears picked up the sound of something shifting in the sand beneath them.

"A witch-eater…!" The shifting soon became audible even to Sheptilah, changing the sand into a roiling sea of white that hampered Shadow’s ability to locate the beast despite his keen ears.

"Where?!" Sheptilah quickly scaled the wall once again to put as much distance between them and the ground as possible.

_What are you so afraid of, Sheptilah?_

_What are you so afraid of, Shadow the Hedgehog?_

"Did you hear that?" Shadow's heart raced.

"Yeah," Sheptilah swallowed, "I did. The ziggurat has never _spoken_ before."

The creature emerged from the sand with an explosive lunge, smashing into the bottom of the glass with enough force to leave a crack.

Sheptilah screamed as the board wobbled but caught her balance. Shadow was holding onto her for dear life with one arm as he formed a Chaos Spear with the other.

The creature resurfaced and lunged at them again, shattering the board and knocking them both into the shifting sands below. The Chaos Spear bounced off the wall and fizzled away.

**Dreamscape 3: Let It Flow**

Ivo was drowning. He heard something clatter against glass and the faint sounds of familiar voices shouting. His vision was going black and everything felt numb but he wasn't in any pain.

The man felt like he was floating on air. He was dimly aware that his brain was deprived of oxygen but continued smiling in ecstasy. Dying wasn't so bad.

Blood that wasn't his bubbled up out of his lungs in a pink froth.

"Get up." He heard his grandfather's gruff voice over him.

_Gerald,_ Eggman thought, _you bastard. I knew I'd meet you in Hell._

"Get. Up." The voice demanded of him again.

_Let me die in peace, damn it._

"You are not dying. Get up."

_I am most definitely dying. My brain is already starting to go. See? You aren't real. You're dead. You died a long time ago and I am dying in the pit of an ancient building. I think._

_If you were real you would know what my favorite color is._

"It's orange. Because it's the opposite of blue."

_Okay, lucky guess. When did I have my first kiss?_

"Ivo…"

_See? Fake._

"Do _you_ remember your first kiss? No."

_Oh._

_Grandpa. Talk to me. I don't want to die alone._

There was a long pause and then:

"What are you most afraid of, Ivo?"

_What? Don't call me that. Nobody calls me that._

"What scares you the most? Think about what scares you the most."

_Cracked glass. Cockpit glass._

"You're afraid of that?"

_Sonic the hedgehog. Glass breaking. I…_

"Eggman is drowning." He heard a female voice say.

"Roll him on his side," a male voice replied, “Quickly.”

* * *

Shadow was roused from unconsciousness by lukewarm droplets splashing across his face. He rolled over and looked up thinking it was rain but could now make out a humanoid figure impaled on a particularly uninviting column of glass directly above him.

He immediately jumped to his feet and could see that the witch's eyes were open but devoid of pupils. Her glamour was off and her white tresses were tangled in the branches like tinsel.

"Sheptilah!" He called.

Her eyes moved in the direction of his voice.

_Help me, Shadow._ Her voice rang in his head.

"How?! How can I help you? You're going to die _faster_ if I pull you off the tree."

_I will be alright. Be not afraid._

Shadow climbed the tree in seconds, causing several of its limbs to produce an unpleasant screech as they scratched against one another.

_Just like that._

Trusting the voice he lifted her by the back of her neck off of the spike and tossed her over his shoulder before jumping down.

Rouge!" Shadow looked around for the bat and found her laying on her side a few feet away. He nudged her with his foot in an uncharacteristic panic to wake her.

Rouge was roused from her stupor only to see the horror before her. "Oh my God!" She felt her heart drop. "What happened?!"

Shadow laid the witch on her back and gingerly turned her head to the side. "I don't know."

Rouge barely had time to process what was happening with Sheptilah before her ears picked up the sound of Eggman gurgling just a few feet away.

“Eggman's choking on something." Her heels clicked loudly as she ran off to check on him. She grimaced at the sight of the froth bubbling in his airway. "Eggman's _drowning_."

"Roll him on his side," Shadow instructed, "God, why is he so useless?!"

The hedgehog was absentmindedly humming the bars to Mr. Sandman and didn't realize it. He felt the woman's throat for a pulse: it was very shallow but it was there.

Sheptilah's body was pale and had already started to cool. However, the edges of her wound were now joined by silvery threads and her flesh began to knit itself shut.

 _Don't listen to the voices,_ the witch rang in all of their heads, _they aren't real. I am healing myself. Do not panic._

Sheptilah’s pupils soon reappeared and she sat up, shrieking between gasps. The faces of her friends contorted like smeared paint as her oxygen-starved brain struggled to comprehend the world around her.

Although the Oracle Stone was in control of her body's movements, it couldn't prevent her from experiencing the effects of major organ failure.

"Stop yelling," Shadow tried to calm her, "you're okay. You're alive." It seemed that he was talking moreso to himself than to her.

The witch's eyes darted in all directions and finally settled on Shadow's. She recognized them and sobbed. She immediately pulled him into a tight hug, stroking his spines.

He allowed this for a moment before pushing her away. His fur was already filthy and matted and the last thing he needed was _more_ witch blood to wash out. _Why do I have The Chordettes stuck in my head?_ He thought. _Of all the songs…_

Ivo stirred slightly with all of the screaming from Sheptilah. His fidgeting soon transitioned into full blown hacking and coughing that forced him awake as he spat up thick globs of phlegm mixed with blood.

"Eggman?" Rouge spoke to him softly. "Eggman, what happened?"

"I heard Gerald talking... I thought I was dying. What the hell happened?" His senses felt dulled, as if everything was covered with a thick layer of wool.

“Sheptilah was impaled on a tree." The bat felt sick to her stomach as she pointed to the gory mess.

 _It almost looks like someone tried to decorate a Christmas tree with paint instead of powdered snow_ , Eggman mused to himself.

"So she was right. The bond would kill me if she dies." He wondered if the blood was even his. He heard Shadow humming to himself and found it almost endearing.

After a moment, Sheptilah stood and felt at her stomach. Her clothes were soaked with blood and she almost slipped on the drops that pooled beneath her feet. She took a few shuddering breaths and swallowed hard.

"Is anyone hurt?" She asked the group.

"Physically? We are okay. Mentally? We are going to need a _lot_ of therapy." Eggman laughed to himself.

Sheptilah scooted up to Eggman and Rouge and hugged them both tightly, "I'm so sorry," she sighed, "I'm so sorry. Maybe we should just forget everything and go." The witch hung her head with shame.

"No way! We came for a book and a Chaos Emerald and we're not leaving without either." Rouge was putting on a brave face.

“We shouldn't sit still for long," Shadow's shoes scraped against the floor as he shuffled forward, "if those damned witch-eaters are around."

"They may not even be real," Eggman posited, "in the same way that nothing in this room is actually real. It's _solid_ but it doesn't truly exist."

Sheptilah reabsorbed her lost blood and rose to her feet. She thought she make out the figure of a little girl in blue in the distance. "You would be surprised how real fake things can be."

"I heard your voice tell me it wasn't real." Rouge adjusted her earpiece. "You did say that, right?"

"I don’t know, I don't remember saying anything..." Sheptilah’s gaze was fixed on objects in the distance, "but the voices probably aren't real. _Something_ is projecting them."

"It asked what I was afraid of and it used a name I haven't called myself by in decades." Eggman said as he absentmindedly drummed his fingers against his gauntlet.

“So it's digging into our memories." Rouge nervously paced back and forth, "it's finding stuff it can use to unsettle us and throw us off our guard.”

"No kidding. My own home trying to kill me… something else is influencing its magic." Sheptilah tied her hair in a knot to keep it out of her face.

"The witch-eaters?" Shadow felt a chill creeping up his spine.

"Or the Chaos Emerald," Sheptilah heard footsteps approaching, "something's coming."

"Shadow! Come play with me!" A small, feminine voice called to him from through the trees.

"No…" Shadow's ruby eyes grew wide and his hands trembled. “It can’t be…”

"Maria…" Ivo took a step back. It was his cousin who was murdered over fifty years prior. "Shadow…" He looked at the black hedgehog who met Eggman's eyes and nodded with understanding.

Maria's slight figure emerged from the trees with her hands behind her back. She was a young girl with blonde hair not unlike Hope’s and a blue dress that matched her eyes.

"Come play, Shadow. We can listen to The Chordettes on Grandpa Gerald's records like you like." She was bouncing on the balls of her feet.

"Go away," Shadow turned away from the figure, "you're not Maria."

“How can you say that? I came all the way here to say hi and you don’t believe it’s me?" The figure pouted for a moment before her expression changed back to a grin. "Mobius looks nothing like I thought it would; this place is magical!”

"Leave-" Sheptilah approached the specter but stopped dead in her tracks. Those eyes. She's seen them before.

"Why are you so mean, Queen Sheptilah?" The figure stomped her foot.

"Leave." Eggman stepped forward this time and drew his gun. "Now."

"You'd shoot your own cousin?!" The figure sniffled as large tears ran down its cheeks. "Ivo, no!"

"No, but you're not my cousin, are you?"

"Eggman, put it away.” Shadow hissed. Facing Maria’s specter fifty years after she was murdered for her part in helping him escape the ARK made his heart ache and hearing her tiny voice pleading for her life was like a stab in the chest.

Ivo hesitated but put the gun back into its holster.

"What's behind your back?" Sheptilah cautiously inched closer. "Show it to me."

"My name is Maria Robotnik and I was murdered by another human." The figure spoke as if she was practicing a line for a TV commercial. "I lived in the Space Colony ARK and was dying in my own body. I am fourteen years old. Shadow is my friend. I died because of Shadow. Shadow the Hedgehog is why I am dead."

"What's behind your back?" Rouge pressed.

"A Chaos Emerald!" The figure revealed it with a big smile, "And it's _green!_ As green as the Mobius I never got to see in person!"

Rouge was calculating ways to steal the Emerald from Maria when Sheptilah suddenly darted forward and grabbed the ghoul by the throat with magic.

The ghost dropped the gem and struggled against the invisible force holding her in the air.

Rouge lunged for the stone and cradled it in her arms as if it were a child.

It was very real.

"Where is my grimoire?!" Sheptilah demanded. "Show it to me!"

"Shadow, help!" Maria's doppelganger cried. "She's hurting me!"

"Sheptilah, stop!" Shadow clenched his fists. " _Drop her._ "

"She's not real, Shadow!" The witch bent the figure so far backwards that her spine would’ve snapped if she was real. The environment began to collapse in on itself like a closing umbrella and the crystalline chiming the trees made was almost as delicate as Maria's strained voice.

"Shadow!" Maria's voice grew more pained. "Shadow..."

“Sheptilah, _let Maria go._ " Shadow's world was spinning. He was beginning to forget that the apparition wasn't real.  
  
“She's going to kill me," the figure sobbed as it choked, "aim for her Oracle Stone!"

  
The hedgehog jetted forward and punched Sheptilah square in the jaw. The impact sent the woman flying and shattered her grip on Maria.

Eggman ran to the witch's aid, hoping that her face wasn't caved in.

“Screw Kick!" Rouge shouted as she flew up and shoved a spinning heel into Shadow's clavicle. The force of the impact also sent Shadow flying but he managed to curl into a ball to soften his landing.

The group’s infighting left them unaware of the fact that the glass forest was becoming a whirling tempest of deadly shards primed to eviscerate them all.


	15. Awaken

**Dreamscape 5: [There's No Place I'd] Rather Be**

Rouge stood alone in an empty town where red and gray brick houses adorned with cloth awnings stretched down steep hills. Cute storefronts bursting with fruit, flowers and antique furniture all had their doors propped open but no one to mind the registers.

  
Colorful bicycles with wicker baskets leaned against the fences surrounding well-manicured trees. Vintage cars in pristine condition were neatly parked on the curbs with nary a scented pine tree in the rear-view mirror. The scene was like something out of a diorama- perfect and fake.

A cool, lemon-scented breeze made the leaves rustle gently.

Rouge was suspicious but a careful glance around the area revealed nothing out of the ordinary. She cautiously proceeded downhill with the Chaos Emerald tucked tightly beneath her arm.

About halfway down, Sheptilah emerged from a storefront with a paper bag full of groceries.

"Rouge! You're okay!" She beamed with delight. "I was so worried."

"Tilly!" The bat embraced her warmly. "You found food?"

"Yes! Would you like some? I only have fruits since I don't eat meat."

"No, thank you.” Rouge turned down her offer despite her growing hunger, still skeptical about anything the ziggurat may offer. “Are you sure it's real?"

"I summoned it with my magic. It's real food." The witch reached into her bag and pulled out a red apple so vibrant that it could've been mistaken for a jewel.

" _Well_..." Rouge hesitated but took the fruit and bit into it. The apple was juicy and tasted amazingly sweet. The only thing she found lacking was its temperature; she would’ve preferred the apple chilled but was satisfied nonetheless.

"I'm glad you still have the Chaos Emerald," Sheptilah nodded, "I was afraid you would've dropped it between rooms." The two continued to stroll downhill at a leisurely pace, enjoying the tranquil breeze.

"I have a death grip on this thing, don’t you worry. Have you seen Shadow or Eggman?" Rouge spoke between bites.

"No," Sheptilah frowned, "and I guess you haven't, either."

"Not a hair. I figure if we keep moving around something will happen." Rouge looked over Sheptilah curiously. "Aren't you hurt?"

"From what?" She paused to think. "Oh, when the hedgehog hit me? No. I can heal myself, remember?" She smiled.

"He really packs a punch!” Rouge nodded. “I was afraid your face would be mush." The bat said as she tossed the apple’s core over her shoulder. Sheptilah chuckled to herself and kept her eyes fixed on a point in the distance.

"Why aren't you eating?" Rouge wiped her lips with the back of her hand. "Aren't you starving, too?"

"Nah," Sheptilah adjusted the bag, "I had some already and I am saving this for the boys. They're probably worse off than we are."

"What would they do without us?"

"Die, probably." The witch grinned.

Rouge saw the witch's reaction as strange but conceded that they were all extremely stressed. She wondered if Sheptilah was delirious from blood loss as the numerous wet stains in the witch’s outfit caught her attention. _Those should have dried by now, Rouge thought, didn’t she reabsorb it all?_

"I am so going to take you shopping for some real clothes when we get out of here." Rouge loved makeovers and Tilly was the perfect subject for her to work on. The bat wanted to keep positive thoughts rolling while strolling through the death trap.

"Don't I have to give you some jewels first?" Sheptilah flashed a fang. "Speaking of- what exactly do those gems do? How do you even use them?" She pointed her chin at the Emerald.

 _Did she always have sharp eyeteeth?_ Rouge thought to herself, _I can't remember that, either._

"Chaos energy is really difficult to control but you can use the Emeralds to do pretty much anything if you know how to go about it. Some people like Sonic and Shadow can go 'Super' and do godlike things; Shadow doesn't even need more than one in his possession to warp around.

"Me, personally? I just like them because they’re a giant gemstones." Rouge held the Emerald up to her cheek and gently nuzzled it.

"So why not just... can _you_ teleport us out of here with the Emerald?"

"No, I never figured out how to use the magic."

"Ah, that does remind me: I did some scrying to see if I could detect my familiar earlier but all I received were fragmented memories. I can't figure out who they belong to but I do believe that it may be someone I already met.”

Rouge could have sworn Sheptilah's words matched her lips when she spoke. Usually when the Oracle Stone translated her words it was like a bad dub of an old movie. _There was no way she could have learned English in such a short time span._

Sheptilah pulled another apple from the bag and offered it to Rouge. The bat gratefully took it and munched on it, noting that it was a little softer than the first one. "I saw a gold streak roaring across the sky above the planet and a world made of food and something about a girl with blue eyes."

_That could be a lot of people. A lot of us have blue eyes. But that gold streak... was it Sonic's super form? Did she see the fight against the Biolizard?_

"Hmm." Rouge chewed loudly. "So you saw your familiar's memories?"

"Yes." Sheptilah avoided eye-contact with the bat.

"What else did you see?"

"A feeling of falling rapidly. I think maybe a feeling of extreme guilt? Something black becoming round and sharp again." Sheptilah sounded spaced out, "and being shot in the chest with a gun."

" _I think I know who your familiar is._ " But before Rouge could say anything more the witch's head whipped around and sneered wide to show off a mouth filled with rows of razor-sharp teeth.

Rouge felt like her mouth was full of writhing worms. She looked at the apple in her hand and saw it was rotten and crawling with bugs. She dropped to her knees and started heaving.

"Thanks for the information, _bat_." All at once the figure of Sheptilah melted into a white witch-eater and grabbed the Chaos Emerald with its gooey 'hands'.

It attempted to use its power but the concentrated Chaos energy filling the crystal proved too much for the creature to handle and it exploded with a piercing shriek; vaporizing instantly and leaving the pristine gem behind.

**Dreamscape 6: An Honest Mistake  
**

Sheptilah awoke in a darkness so oppressive that it was impossible to see even an inch ahead of her. The witch dimly recalled the maelstrom of glass that consumed the group and cautiously probed herself for injuries but found that she was unharmed. She then felt around her surroundings and realized that she was in an enclosed space deep underground.

Her ears strained hoping to hear something other than her pounding heart.

Silence.

_Dead silence._

After what felt like hours of fruitless screaming, panting and cursing- she felt exhausted enough to think.

She could dig herself out with her nails but she was afraid of suffocating if the packed dirt walls collapsed on top of her.

"I wish I wasn't alone," she sobbed, "gods, I'd even take being squished next to that man right now..."

 _That's it!_ She'd search for Eggman and warp to him!

She felt around for a snag- hoping to find a knotted piece of the Universe to open a portal with and prayed it wouldn't open inside him.

**Dreamscape 7: I Was Made For Loving You**

Eggman groaned softly and rolled over, having found himself in a warm and fluffy bed under a down comforter. He couldn't open his eyes and instead felt around with his ungloved hand in the sheets. His fingertips bumped into something and he traced it. It was the shape of a woman.

She giggled with delight. "Ivo!" It was a voice he hadn't heard in years.

"Lucinda?" He managed to force his eyes open, "Lucinda is that really you?"

"Ivo, honey…" The figure gestured to herself. "Who else would it be?"

Eggman was very confused. He hadn't even thought of his high school crush in the longest time. She didn't look like she aged at all. She still had those bright eyes, rosy cheeks and wavy red hair like he remembered.

"You work too hard, you know. All those sleeping pills the doctors had you try still leaves you confused in the morning." She gently patted Eggman's head. "You're okay."

Eggman sat up and observed it was his old bedroom from years ago except there were some stuffed children's toys on the floor. They were hedgehogs in pink and blue with little green buttons for eyes.

He looked at his bare hand and saw he was wearing a silver wedding ring.

"Mommy! Daddy!" Two little voices threw his door open and rushed in. "It's Christmas!" They were twin girls who couldn't have been older than five years with hair as red as their mother's. One had short hair and the other had very long hair.

 _Christmas? I don't even celebrate that holiday_ \- His train of thought was interrupted by the little girls jumping on the bed.

"Girls, please!" Lucinda tried to calm them. "Don't jump on the bed." She got out and put on her robe and slippers.

"Sorry, mom." The twins spoke in unison.

" _Daddy_ ," the one with short hair whined, "Nanny says we can't open presents until you're up so come on! Get up!" He was relieved to see they didn't inherit his eyes.

He felt better, calmer and more at home. Maybe it was all a vivid dream brought on by sleeping medications.

Two familiar faces knocked on the door frame. It was Sheptilah and Shadow. They shyly peeked their heads in the room

"Masters," Sheptilah bowed, "may we come in?"

"Yes, of course." Lucinda invited them in. Both Shadow and Sheptilah were wearing matching servant uniforms in black and gold.

"We apologize for the disturbance but," the short-haired girl ran up to the hedgehog, grabbed his hands and bounced, "but Mistresses Ivana and Rosie were too excited about it being Christmas morning." Shadow couldn't help but smile at the sweet little girl.

"Shadow? _Shadow the hedgehog?_ " Eggman was confused again. "Good heavens, man."

"Yes, Master Robotnik," he bowed his head slightly, "are you alright?" He looked very worried.

 _Nobody calls me Robotnik anymore_. He was highly alert and kept careful note of everyone’s movements and words. _This must be another room. I'm trapped in another room._ It was easy to figure that wasn't the real Sheptilah or Shadow. He resolved to play along until he could find a way out.

"Maybe after some breakfast you will feel better. Mistress Maria will be here any minute with her children. Shadow and I made our famous skyscraper pancakes!" Sheptilah boasted, "the kind you like."

"Well, I _do_ like pancakes," Eggman got out of bed and found he was already fully dressed.

"Come on, girls." Shadow, with Sheptilah's assistance ushered them out of the room. From down the hall Eggman could hear them struggle to keep the girls from tearing open presents.

"I'm so glad we ended up hiring them both instead of just one," Lucinda grabbed Eggman's arm and held it close, "Who knew we'd have twins?"

"Thanks for the exposition," he resisted her touch but became comfortable with it after a moment, "Where is the grimoire?"

"Oh, I see" Lucinda smiled at him, "so you know."

"Yes," he flinched when her grip on his bicep tightened.

"Dearest Ovi Kintobor, I have an offer for you." Lucinda's figure shut her eyes and rested her cheek on Eggman's shoulder.

"What kind of offer?" The hallway they were walking in stretched in forever.

"I am the ziggurat's core itself. I can do anything for you within these stone walls. I developed sentience after five thousand long and lonely years." The figure of Lucinda faded and the world around them dissolved and became something new.

It was now Eggman's office with Sonic standing in the corner with his ankles chained together and looking despondent. The once stunning blue hedgehog was now a bit paler and his spines kept woefully blunted to prevent any uprising. His wrists and ankles were scarred from years of being shackled. He dare not make eye contact with his master. In his hands was a golden tray with a fresh cup of coffee.

The figure of Lucinda was now Katella, another redhead from Eggman's past. Busty and brutal, Katella was not a woman Eggman remembered fondly. She was too rough with the merchandise, so to speak.

"Come, hedgehog," the woman motioned for him to bring the coffee to Eggman. The projection of Sonic shuffled uncomfortably and silently presented the drink with his head down.

"This is _sick._ " Eggman refused the drink, "none of this is what I want."

"Isn't this what _all_ men want? Ultimate power. Their own personal slaves that don't speak or run. What else could you want?"

"What is it that _you_ want?" Eggman had had enough.

"You are a tough one to figure out," Katella circled him, "I can see that in your heart you want this. You want to be loved, adored and to have Sonic grovelling at your feet."

"It isn't real," he kept his eyes on her, "so it means nothing."

"I _see…_ I know what your fear is now. The witch, the hedgehog and the bat were quite simple to figure out but you… " The mirage pressed her finger accusingly over Eggman's heart. "You're afraid of stagnation."

"Or so you think." Eggman tried to keep his head clear so the 'core' couldn't read it.

"You changed your name many times," Katella counted off on her fingers. "You changed your appearance many times and well... you also keep changing your goals. Stop resisting and _stay_. Stay here with me and I can be whatever you want me to be at any time. Stay with me forever." She cooed at him.

"Where is the grimoire, the Chaos Emerald and the others I came in with?"

"Is that what you want-" the figure paused and had a thousand-yard stare. Eggman watched the ghost stop moving altogether. A portal opened up beside him, almost inside him, and out stepped the real Sheptilah.

"Gah!" Her hair was matted with dirt and blood, "That would've been _uncomfortable_ if you were standing a little closer."

"Tilly?" Eggman stepped back.

"The one and only!" She beamed despite being absolutely filthy.

"How do I know it's really you?" He squinted at her behind his dark glasses.

"I had to convince Thunderbolt to not walk in on you in the shower today by gently punting her down the hall."

" _It's you!_ " He gripped her shoulders tightly. "Don't leave me alone in this cursed place ever again."

"Ivo, _please stop touching me_ ," she struggled to breathe, "All day you have been hands-on and it's _weird_."

"Sorry," he let go, "what happened to you?"

"The room I was just in buried me underground and I'm extremely claustrophobic. I literally dug myself out by my nails. I'm fucking _pissed_." She spat out a chunk of dirt.

"Okay, then." He made a mental note to not trap her anywhere cramped.

" _You_ ," Sheptilah stepped up to the projection of Katella which was still frozen in place, "I have had enough of this nonsense." She reached behind her head and removed the rusty athame from its sheath and stabbed the image with it in the throat.

She then sliced in the shape of a pentagram and uttered some ancient cleansing spell, the words making themselves visible on the blade in her language. The magic flowed from her stone into her hands and twisted like dark purple vines around her fingers and onto the athame. The projection fizzled into smoke and the room returned to its natural state: sandstone with empty clay jars.

Sheptilah was panting and sweaty with exertion. "Now let's go find my book."

She opened another portal and stuck her head in to check for danger. When she was satisfied that it was safe enough she pulled Eggman in with her.

**Daydreamscape: More And More**

Eggman and Sheptilah hopped through portals in a frenzy. She cut locks of her hair and dropped them to mark off the rooms they had already been in and dispelled the mirages in each of them.

The first dozen rooms were simple with nothing special in it as the genius loci was busy tormenting others elsewhere. It felt like hours before they found Rouge's room.

The bat was curled up into a fetal position on the ground, holding the Chaos Emerald to her aching stomach.

"Rouge!" Eggman knelt beside her and saw the poor woman was soaked with cold sweat.

"Eggman?" she weakly replied, "Are you the real Sheptilah and Eggman or are you more figments?"

"We're the real deal. What happened to you?" Tilly sat next to her and gently brushed the hair out of Rouge's face.

"Don't take apples from witches;" she managed to crack a smile, "that's what happened to me."

"Can you heal her?" Ivo asked Tilly.

The witch was still panting from exhaustion but nodded, "I have just enough to boost her." She laid a hand on Rouge's cheek and the magic flowed into the bat, curing her nausea and dehydration. The Chaos Emerald released some energy in response to Sheptilah's and it shocked her arm badly.

"Ow!" She shrieked. Her arm had burn marks on it from her fingertips up to her elbow.

Rouge sat up and flexed her wings. She was overjoyed to not be sick anymore.

"Why'd your gem hurt me?" Tilly was rubbing her arm to get feeling back. It was the same kind of pain and numbness felt when your limb falls asleep.

"Oh… the same thing happened to a witch-eater when it tried to use the emerald." Rouge rubbed her eyes, "I don't think it's ever done that."

"Let's go find Shadow," Eggman helped the women to their feet. "We'll figure the rest out later."

**Dreamscape 8: Message In A Bottle**

Shadow found himself standing alone on a beach. The water was dark and looked oily in the orange sunset. The hedgehog could look directly at the setting star and not hurt his eyes. The sound of the water lapping against the shore was calming. Shadow's fist throbbed dully. He couldn't remember what he did to injure it. He flexed his hand to ease the pain and his knuckles cracked back into place.

"Shads!" He heard Sonic's voice call. He blinked and saw the blue hedgehog standing in the sea with the water up to his shoulders.

"I'm so glad to see you!" Sonic struggled to smile. "Help me out of here!"

"You aren't real." Shadow shook his head and realized the gear he was wearing was gone. He looked around for it and found nothing. He looked behind him and saw the empty landscape stretch for miles like the first room and turned back to face the water.

"Dude, _come on_." Sonic urged. "I found myself warped here. I'm in a concrete block or something. I've been trapped here for hours and the tide came in and if you don't get me out of here I'm going to drown."

"You're a mirage." Shadow insisted.

"I know I'm a sight for sore eyes but a mirage is a little much, don't you think?" Sonic spat out sea water. "Dude…"

"How did you get here?" Shadow brushed sand out of his spines, "That is, if you're not a faker."

"Remember? I wanted to come along so badly! I followed Queen Sheptilah and the doctor all the way out here. I snuck into the building and it attacked me." Sonic was tilting his head back as far as he could, long black nose sticking out of the water like a dinghy.

Shadow weighed the pros and cons. If it really was a mirage he would gladly beat it to a pulp; if it really was Sonic he would get to lord this favor over him _forever_.

The black hedgehog stepped forward and the water split apart revealing half-buried rusted car parts. It was strange how the water was avoiding even touching Shadow; almost as if it was afraid of him.

He found it difficult to keep from tripping on the debris crunching beneath his shoes but made it to Sonic after a few moments. He looked back to the shore and he couldn't see it. It was as if the ocean stretched on forever.

"My hero." The blue hedgehog smirked. His arms were behind his back and he was up to his chest in the block. Shadow punched the block with lightning-fast reflexes and it crumbled to dust. Sonic stretched and rotated his shoulders.

"Thanks, Shads!" He sighed. "I wish I didn't tag along. Thought I was going to drown."

"Have you seen a door? A portal? _Anything?_ " Shadow was not about to play small talk with a mirage.

"All I saw today was a whole lotta beach." Sonic suddenly paused and stared off in the distance.

Shadow peered blankly at the blue hedgehog for a moment and then waved his hand in front of soulless green eyes.

"What? Oh, sorry." Sonic's demeanor changed. "Race you to the shore!" He sped off as a blue smear to the shoreline and waved at an unbelieving Shadow who was still standing in the parted waters.

Shadow simply walked back calmly, the water now only as deep as his knees.

"It's no fun when you don't put your all into it." Sonic kicked a hubcap away dejectedly.

"You're a very convincing fake," Shadow pointed a finger at Sonic, "but I still know a bootleg when I see one."

"Oh, whatever." Sonic's figure leaned forward as if he was suspended by the tail. "It's also no fun when you don't play along." His body started to bubble and expand like he was boiling in his own skin. The blue and peach pelt burst apart like cheap velvet and exposed the witch-eater within.

This one was different from the others. It looked the same but it could speak- and that made it _very_ dangerous.

Shadow formed a Chaos Spear in each hand and was ready to strike.

The witch-eater backed up and remained hunched over its viscous, drippy body.

"Shadow the hedgehog," it spoke with no mouth, "I know what you are. Do you know _what_ you are?"

"I am Shadow the hedgehog, Ultimate Lifeform. That is what I am."

"Do you know what _I_ am?" The being's voice sounded like Shadow's own.

"You are scum."

"I am me," the vile creature straightened up, "and I am here to end your life before you can end mine."

"Fat chance!" Shadow hurled the energy at the beast and it dodged the blasts effortlessly but did not retaliate.

"You may have noticed you cannot teleport here," the creature's voice bounced in Shadow's skull distortedly, "thus far I have not figured out how to stop your spears."

"I've had _enough_ of your nonsense." Shadow jumped upward and threw more bolts which also missed its target. Glass discs formed on the sand where the spears struck. Under these discs appeared to be portals much like the ones the witch could open.

The hedgehog noticed this and grinned. He didn't have to hit the beast- just everything else around it until it's cornered.

A door opened over the sea. Eggman, Sheptilah and Rouge fell through it with their hands clasped together in a circle. The trio landed with a loud splash but not before Shadow could hear the witch screaming apologies for her bad aim.

Rouge flew up out of the water and spiraled toward the creature at the shore and kicked it in the jaw. The fluid beast absorbed her impact and flung her upward. Rouge twisted so she was right-side-up and landed safely on the sand.

Eggman and Sheptilah popped their heads out of the now waist-deep water and tried to walk to the shore but were met with rusty metal slicing up their legs and feet. Eggman scooped up the witch in his arms and carried her. His boots protected his feet from getting too badly injured but Sheptilah, by virtue of being barefoot, was unable to even stand on her own from the cuts.

"Shadow, catch!" Rouge threw the Emerald at him. He caught it in his hand and used its power to create a massive Chaos Spear and aimed it at the water away from the two Overlanders.

The resulting energy surge caused the entire Ziggurat to shake violently.

Omega was nearly knocked off the summit of the building from the tremors. That was the final straw for him. Everyone had been missing from communication for over six hours and GUN agents were unable to get to them. It was time to blow apart the problem.

"I'm going in!" Omega announced to Cabbot and Hope.

"Wait a second-" Hope's exasperated little voice fell on deaf ears. Omega was already punching and blasting his way inside. The robot was careful enough to take out one wall at a time as he was looking for his comrades and, unfortunately, Eggman. GUN agents followed the robot in.

Back at the 'beach' Shadow and Rouge were each taking turns attacking the cackling monster while Eggman was doing his best to keep Sheptilah from bleeding to death.

"You owe me so much when we get back." Eggman flinched when the ziggurat rumbled again. " _If_ we get back." He was squeezing her calf to stop the flow as much as possible. He did not do well with blood and was getting queasy.

"I know, I know!" Sheptilah writhed with pain. "Whatever you want just hold my leg closed! I feel like I'm going to faint."

"Don't faint- you may not wake up again." He wasn’t being dramatic.

"I'm trying not to… I feel like I'm falling asleep!" She grit her teeth.

"I was talking to myself!" Eggman huffed.

"I don't feel good." She whined.

"I am here to save the meatbags." A robotic voice announced itself. It was Omega, making a grand entrance by punching a wall out. This caused the illusion to fully fizzle out and reveal the room for what it was: empty but quite large.

"Omega!" Shadow and Rouge shouted in unison.

"I am impatient." The robot beeped.

Shadow cornered the creature and was able to use one final Chaos Spear to destroy the witch-eater before it could rebuild the room. The being exploded in all directions with a ear-splitting shriek and vanished like water vapor.

"I'm so happy to see you, Omega." Rouge stood and brushed herself off. "We must look awful."

"Your appearance is unchanged." The robot beeped. Rouge scoffed at the unintentional insult. GUN agents immediately tended to Sheptilah's more dangerous wounds with their first-aid kits and carried her and the limping Eggman to the ship outside.

"We can't leave until we find the grimoire." Rouge explained to the other agents.

"We found a big book in a crystalline box on our way down, actually." The red fox nodded. "It's already been loaded into the ship by one of our larger agents."

"Well that's _extremely_ convenient." Shadow smirked and held up the Emerald. "At least one of our targets today was easy to acquire. We went through Hell to get this."

" _Several_ hells." Rouge corrected him. "Don't look a gift horse in the mouth, Shadow. Just be grateful this excursion to Tilly's house over."


	16. Stay With Me

"You should take a gentleman out to dinner _before_ you handcuff him to something," Eggman joked, “This is wholly unnecessary."

A human woman in GUN-issued nursing scrubs rolled her eyes and scoffed at him as she tidied up the room.

Eggman tried to get comfortable in the hospital bed but he just couldn't. He was dressed in those flimsy, drafty cotton gowns they issue all of the patients. He felt especially naked without his gauntlet. They at least let him keep his glasses.

"Why can't I just go to a hospital of _my_ choice?" He shifted his weight and the cuffs clinked against the bars of the bed. His leg was bandaged tightly and the wound throbbed painfully with each heartbeat. The cuts were so superficial all they needed was to be cleaned and glued shut. He was fit enough to be released immediately but no- those _damned_ unjust GUN officials wanted to keep him prisoner.

"Because you have been a thorn in our side since…" The nurse crossed her arms with a huff. "Since whatever day you were born."

* * *

Rouge stood under the shower-head propped against the cold tile by her arms. She felt so disgusting and tired she barely had the energy to wash herself. Through sheer water pressure alone she managed to get the bulk of the filth off of her fur. After a deep sigh she turned off the water and pulled on her pajamas, fur still wet.

She trudged to her cushy bed and fell asleep almost instantly, sinking deep into the mattress face-down.

* * *

Shadow sat in a hot bath furiously scrubbing his fur. The witch blood would not come out no matter how much soap he used. "This must be how Lady Macbeth felt." He muttered to himself. _Out, damned spot!_

He remembered an old trick Maria taught him when it was nearing the end of her life: blood comes out with hydrogen peroxide.

 _Grandpa tells me it causes blood cells to lyse… that means break apart,_ he could remember her little voice teaching him, _you pour it on the stained thing and it bubbles! Then the blood washes out._

He pouted; the medicine cabinet was on the other side of the room and he was comfortable in the water.

The hedgehog groaned and got out, careful not to slip on the cold tile. He grabbed the brown bottle of the peroxide and got back into the warmth of the tub. He began by pouring a few drops on his extended arm and expected it to bubble but there was no reaction.

He poured on a little more but still nothing. Then he flipped the bottle and read the underside.

"Expiration date August fifteenth, two-thousand-and-one. This expired before I was even _resurrected_." He groaned loudly and set the bottle on the edge of the tub and slipped under the water leaving only his ears poking out.

_Of course it's expired. It wouldn't be my life if even the little things didn't go wrong._

* * *

Sheptilah awoke to find her left arm was burning and she couldn't move her right leg. She pulled back the blanket to see that she had black marks all up her arm and a rash where a blood transfusion IV was taped to her skin.

She reached to pull the offending needle out but was met by scolding.

"Do _not_ take that out." Shadow hissed. He was sitting next to the bed in a chair, feet swinging absentmindedly as he read a thick paperback. Although Sheptilah couldn't read the title it was _House Of Leaves._

Her heart rate monitor beeped with her startled jump. "Shadow! You nearly scared me to death."

"I am told you bit a doctor so I am here to make sure you do not do that again." He didn't look up from his book.

"I don't remember biting anyone." She ran her tongue over her teeth. "Why would I do that? Ugh, my mouth feels like it's full of cotton."

"Welcome to the GUN hospital wing," he turned a crisp page, "where sometimes our doctors are chew toys."

The beeping on the monitor slowed as she calmed down.

"Is this blood?" She gestured to the plastic bags hanging from a metal rack. One was red and one was clear and both had tubes that met in a small cylinder at the ends that slowly dripped into the tube leading to her arm.

"Blood and saline." He turned another page. "You lost a lot of blood. Most of it in my own fur."

"Whose blood is _this_?"

"An anonymous human donor. Apparently O- is in _high_ demand so you should consider donating when you're not recovering from being impaled on glass trees."

"Here..." She reached out her palm and curled her fingers as if grabbing something. This caused the dried blood that still clung to his fur to disappear into a dusty powder and be absorbed back into her hand.

Shadow ran his hand over his now clean fluff. "Thanks," he paused, "I also want to apologize for sucker-punching you."

"No, it's alright. You hit my jaw and I barely felt it. Had you hit my Oracle Stone you would've killed _everyone_." She brushed off the attack knowing it wasn't his fault.

"What?" He raised an eyebrow.

"My stone holds all my magic so if it breaks, even a little crack, it unleashes all that energy at once and it goes off like…" She made an explosion sound.

" _Wait_ ," he remembered the Maria figure urging him to punch the stone and at the last second he aimed the punch upward instead of downward, "I almost killed everyone?"

"Yeah. _Everyone_. You would've taken the whole ziggurat with you and then some. We'd be scorch marks right now if you didn't aim at my mouth. So… thank you. Thank you for splitting my lip and not my Stone." She watched the mixture of blood and saline drip.

"The ziggurat tried to kill us all?" What else almost happened in there? He felt dread creep up over the back of his neck.

"No. Whatever was controlling it was." Sheptilah sighed, "Something was controlling it. Or someone- and it knew about our stones and what it does."

She struggled to sit up. She just couldn't seem to get the leverage to scoot upward and laid back down with defeat. She tried to bend her knees and learned she was cuffed to the bed by her ankles.

"Why am I being restrained? I want to speak to Mr. Cabbot."

"Because you bit a doctor." He was finding it hard to concentrate on the page before him and shut the book. "Did you know you talk in your sleep?"

"I do?" She sounded dreamy. "Did I say anything nice?"

"You were calling for Hebat; your old familiar."

"Precious Hebat," the witch sighed, "I miss her so much. I wonder…" Tilly was a little loopy due to pain medications and drifted off without finishing her thought.

"Wonder what?"

"I wonder if I could bring her back... My little pink armadillo; what I wouldn't do to bring you back."

"Bringing back the dead?" His stomach knotted.

"Yes..." She held the 'sss' longer than necessary.

"Bad idea. Bringing back the dead is… impossible, isn't it?" Impossible wasn't the word he wanted. Shadow wanted to say 'sacrilegious'.

"Is it? I never tried. It's probably possible but…" She coughed, "oh so forbidden. I would give my life to have Hebat back, though. I don't know who my new familiar is but I am scared to death of them. I am pretty sure I've already met them. That's what scares me so much; I felt things and what I felt..." Sheptilah shut her eyes and her words slurred a little. "I don't want that familiar. I don't want to know who is holding those secrets."

“Would the Universe really pair you up with someone or something so vile?”

“Well, it paired me up with _Eggman_.”

“Fair enough.”

“I’m just… I’m just afraid my familiar will be belligerent. It’s rare but sometimes bad pairs happen. From what I’ve seen and felt this being is uncontrollable and vicious. There was a human child involved, too, or something.”

Sheptilah’s head hurt from trying to recall what she saw.

“What if my destiny is to just die? Go out with a very large bang like the ziggurat wanted. Am I supposed to take Eggman and my familiar down with me because the Universe deemed them so awful?”

Shadow shifted uncomfortably. He almost wanted to go back to talking of necromancy.

"Can you _talk_ to the dead?" He changed the subject.

"Sure, that's easy!" She spoke fast and excitedly. "All you need is a talking board and-"

"Yay- you're awake!" Rouge popped her head in the door and grinned at the witch. Then she saw the hedgehog and her face became serious. "Shadow, can I talk to you for a second? In private?"

The hedgehog sighed and stood up, metal shoes clicking on the ground. He dropped his book on the seat and walked into the hallway with Rouge.

The poor bat was so nervous her wings were twitching.

"Shadow, do you know what you are?" She asked in a small voice so that nobody could overhear.

"A half-alien half-Mobian hedgehog hybrid known as the The Ultimate Lifeform?"

"Yes, but…" She looked around to make sure they were alone. "You know how the witch is looking for her familiar?"

"Yes…" Shadow was growing suspicious. _Don't you dare say it, Rouge,_ he thought.

"I think you're it."

"Rouge, that is _not_ funny."

"I'm serious!" She bit her lip. "The ziggurat came to me when we were separated as a figment of Sheptilah and it asked me questions and when I figured out it was you it… it disappeared."

Shadow put his finger in the air to silence her. "You've gone batty."

Rouge blushed and crossed her arms indignantly. "If you were anyone else I would have your jaw on the floor."

"I am nobody's _pet_." He spat the word out with vitriol. "We will go sort this out right now." He took Rouge by the wrist and walked her back into the room where Sheptilah was lying.

Cabbot was in there sitting with her in the chair Shadow once occupied. They were talking softly about his wife and her condition.

"She's doing just fine, it's you I'm worried about." Cabbot undid the cuffs on her ankles.

Sheptilah instantly felt better and thanked him.

"I'm alright. The only reason I'm still all messed up is because I was unfortunately attacked with iron. The painkillers are only dulling the ache a little. Has Hope gone through the footage yet? I still don't understand the concept of movies." Sheptilah's mind wandered again. "I wonder what is there."

"She's got a lot of recordings to go through even though some of you lost the gear so it'll be some time before she goes through it all." He heard footsteps approaching.

"Rouge and Shadow," Boris turned and saw them standing in the doorway, "come in."

Tilly waved at them cheerfully.

"Poor thing got dozens of stitches in her leg," Cabbot smiled at the witch, "she says you were talking about necromancy?"

"Yes. I was telling her that is an idiotic idea." Shadow squinted at her. The witch shrugged innocently.

"I want to state for the record that I am sorry for biting that doctor," she frowned, "are they ok?"

Rouge smiled. "Oh, Tilly. It wasn't a bad bite you just didn't want to be stabbed with a needle. You didn't even leave a mark. You nibbled at best."

"Oh. Well, when can I leave? There's something I need to do." She looked at Cabbot.

"First you need to get your grimoire and separate yourself from Eggman so we can be done with him." The bat's wings still twitched even though she was doing her best to keep it together and not blurt out her hypothesis on the witch's familiar.

Sheptilah gasped. "It's _here?_ "

"Eggman and the grimoire are both still here." Shadow nodded.

Sheptilah threw back the blanket and looked down at her legs. They were all bandaged up nicely. She carefully flexed her toes and determined she would be able to stand on them.

"Wait a second-" Cabbot was interrupted by Tilly jumping out of the bed and unsteadily placing her weight on her 'good' leg. The motion pulled the short tubes connected to the IVs, nearly knocking over the rack.

"I'm okay." Tilly smiled with her hands on her hips.

"Listen," Rouge caught the pole holding the IVs, "you are gonna hurt yourself."

"But I'm so close!" Tilly's eyes were wild with agitation and excitement.

"You need to take it easy and we'll escort you to it in a wheelchair." Cabbot lightly rested his hand on her shoulder. He needed her magic and would be very upset if the witch would be unable to heal his wife.

"Please let me take this damned thing out of my arm," she pointed to the IVs, "it hurts like Hell."

* * *

She felt useless being escorted around in a wheelchair as if she was weak. Sheptilah absolutely hated not being able to move around on her own and was quietly seething from the throbbing in her leg. Strangely enough Rouge volunteered to push the chair.

They wheeled her down the hallway past Eggman's room. He was having a heated debate with the nurse from earlier that could be heard from far away.

"You are disgusting!" Her expression was indignant. "Pepperoni, scrambled eggs, ham and onions on _pizza?_ Of all the things I know about you that is the _worst_."

"Says the woman who claims she puts anchovies on her pizza," he pointed at her with his free hand, “those bony little fish are mostly salt!”

Sheptilah gestured that she wanted to go in and talk and Rouge nodded.

"What are you so angry about now, Ivo?" Tilly tapped her fingers on the armrest.

"Hey." Eggman grunted.

" _You!_ " The nurse narrowed her eyes at the witch. "I'm surprised you are not muzzled."

"Oh!" Sheptilah blushed with shame. "You must be the person I bit. I apologize…"

"You two deserve each other." The nurse stormed off, sneakers squeaking.

"Ah, you bit _her_ ," Shadow rolled his eyes, "I'm surprised she didn't bite you in retaliation."

His quip elicited some polite chuckles in return.

"Guess what we're going to do?" Tilly clasped her hands together in her lap.

"We're going back to my lair?" Eggman guessed hopefully.

"Nope! We're getting unbonded. Some GUN soldiers found the grimoire while you were holding my leg together. I never have to see you again!" She grinned.

Eggman frowned. "You don't have to sound so enthusiastic about it."

Cabbot approached Eggman and uncuffed him so he could follow them down. Given the superficiality of his wounds he was forced to walk.

Hope sat in a big chair in the basement laboratory. Instruments quietly beeped, reading energy levels on the massive crystal with the tome inside it.

It seemed to contain a massive amount of stored energy and she couldn't tell if it was the book or the mineral surrounding it. The object already broke some of the sensors and three laptops.

"This thing is a thousand pounds of nonsense." The blonde sighed with defeat. She at least was able to determine it's not radioactive despite its bright green glow.

She went back to reviewing some of the footage extracted from the gear worn at the ziggurat excursion. There was a lot of static and hardly any speaking from any of them.

Eggman's footage was especially a jumbled, terrifying mess.

In it was nothing but blackness and then suddenly Sheptilah impaled upon the glass tree. The gory image made Hope jump and she slammed her laptop shut.

"Hello!" Rouge greeted the girl and was met by a loud yelp.

"I… sorry; you startled me." She panted. "Looks like everyone is alive and… _together_."

"More or less." Eggman's sardonic comment was mostly unappreciated.

Sheptilah stood and hopped on her good foot over to the crystal. She ran her hands over the smooth mineral and it disappeared, leaving just the book. She picked up massive the book effortlessly and hopped back over to the group.

Shadow's fur stood on end making him look fluffier than usual. With magic the witch held the book up and opened it. She scanned through the pages all with different handwriting, inks and in some cases different languages.

"Resurrection spells, healing spells..." The witch was speaking to herself." Her expression turned to a frustrated one. "It says my familiar has to do it. They take a piece of iron and 'slice' it between the two joined spirits and it will undo the spell. All this while standing in some sigils."

"How do you find your familiar?" Shadow asked. Rouge looked at him and then at the witch.

"Finding spells… finding spells," Sheptilah flipped through the pages again. Rouge and Shadow approached the book and looked at the illustrations and writing. The book was so large the two Mobians could each fit on a page with room in the margins.

"Hmm. I can read this…" Shadow pointed. "I can read this cuneiform. All of it. Does the book allow anyone to read it in the way your stone translates speech? If so, move over; I can read much faster than you can."

"Shadow, that's not funny," Sheptilah stared at him with horror, "that is not funny."

"What's wrong?" Cabbot asked. Hope sat up and Eggman looked at Rouge.

"The book doesn't allow itself to be read by just _anyone._ This means Shadow the hedgehog is my familiar. Only a familiar can read the book. Especially one without an Oracle Stone."

You could hear a pin drop. Shadow's blood ran cold.

"I knew it," Rouge's wings flicked, " _I knew it_. I was right."

"Wait, what does this mean?" Hope stood. "What are you talking about?"

"Prove you can read this." Sheptilah pointed to a random entry.

Shadow looked at it and understood. "It's a spell for banishing nightmares using a white candle anointed with lavender oil and deadly nightshade leaves."

A pause.

"Well, is he right?" Eggman asked.

"Yes, he is." Sheptilah shut the book and knelt on her bad leg despite the pain. Her white hair pooled around her body.

"As your destined witch I will serve at your side until my death." She refused to make eye contact.

Shadow stepped back. "Wait-"

"The witch serves the familiar," she spoke through her gritted teeth, "I have said they are equals but the truth is the witch who serves."

"I don't wish to be your familiar. How do you pick someone else?"

"The Universe deemed it so. It cannot be undone. Another would be selected for me if you die."

She was angry. First the Universe decided to bond her to Eggman and again in its infinite wisdom it determined that Shadow was her familiar.

"Honestly, I'm just glad it's not Thunderbolt." Eggman was almost relieved.

"But it makes sense." Rouge stepped forward. "It makes perfect sense. You're both from different time periods. You're both powerful and the ziggurat separated you two together at first. It asked me for information on your familiar and when it figured out it was Shadow it tried to have him kill you."

"The ziggurat did that?" Hope was confused. "But it's just a building."

"No, something controlling it did that." Eggman interjected, "There's also the fact that Shadow was involved in the moon blowing up as well."

"What?" Sheptilah was stunned. "It… it wasn't just you?"

"No, it wasn't. Shadow was involved as well as Rouge. Neither of you told her?" Eggman smirked. "Sorry to spill the beans then."

Shadow shot Eggman a glare and Rouge face palmed.

"I'm being punished." Sheptilah stood and touched the still-floating grimoire. "I'm being punished. I have to work with the people that released the witch-eaters causing all this trouble. The Universe is punishing me."

" _Rude_ ," Eggman huffed, "I'm a delight."

"Sheptilah," Cabbot approached her, "you did nothing wrong. Come on, let's get you back to your bed."

"Do not come near me!" She hissed, not looking up. "And do _not_ touch me."

"Stop being so mean!" Hope raised her voice. "We would have to work together anyway to defeat these witch-eater things, right? So what difference does it make if they're 'magically' bound to you or not? Grow up. You've had five thousand years to come to terms with the possibilities and you act like a spoiled child."

"There are implications of this beyond your understanding," Tilly shot the girl a poisonous look, " _far_ beyond."

"Then explain; tell us what these implications are." Rouge spoke softly.

"Death. Death is the implication! I know I will die regardless but what matters is who goes down with me." She stood and limped over to Hope, "I watched one familiar get torn apart and I don't want to do it again." She turned to Eggman. "You I don't particularly care about; but _you_ ," she turned to Shadow, "you're a demon in the metaphorical sense."

"You don't know anything about me," he crossed his arms defiantly, "unlike you I face my challenges head-on and without fear or blaming others."

"I know what I saw when I was searching for you. It was not good. I don't want you as a familiar, either." Her leg was throbbing and the movement caused some of the wounds to open a bit and she was bleeding through the bandages.

"All of the deaths we saw back at Eggman's Soumerca base? That was your fault," she gestured to Eggman and the Mobians, "All of it. _You_ released those beasts when you destroyed the moon for what I'm sure was some ridiculous and selfish reason." Sheptilah's anger filled her heart with fire and her throat with bile.

She turned to the giant book and shrunk it with magic and placed it in the pocket behind her head like everything else she carried with her.

Eggman himself was a little hurt that she said she didn't care about him. After all he was the one that found her! She _owed_ him for waking her up.

"But you are correct, Hope. I am handling the situation quite immaturely. I apologize for my outburst. I'm happy to work with irresponsible people and clean up the mess they made by paying for it with my life." She forced a very fake and cheesy smile.

Hope was speechless. The hedgehog was deeply insulted by her words. His actions were due to the manipulation by the doctor and not of his own true volition. His anger and hatred for humans was exploited for Eggman's gain; but understood that she didn't know the _context_.

"Fight me." Shadow turned away. "If you're so angry at what we've done then fight me and get your justice. Prove your strength to me, witch."

Sheptilah laughed. " _Fight_ you? I cannot fight my familiar; as detestable as they may be."

"Fight me," he repeated, "when you are fully recovered. I challenge you to a friendly sparring match. Work out your anger and aggression on me, if you hate me so much. I’ll prove myself worthy."

"Wait a minute-" Cabbot raised his hands defensively. "I can't allow this."

"Sir; consider it a training exercise. If we are supposed to be together then we should know each other's limits, strengths and weaknesses." Shadow was persuasive when he wanted to prove his strength.

"This is a bad idea," Rouge shook her head. "You'll kill each other." She was already texting Sonic and his friends letting them know some nonsense was about to go down in case she needed backup.

"I suppose I can allow it if you both agree to the sparring match- but it is by _my_ rules." Cabbot felt like a pushover.

"Challenge accepted." Sheptilah nodded. "I will fight you, if that's what you wish. We do not have to wait for me to recover; we can fight right now."

"First- let us be unbonded, shall we?" Eggman clasped his hands together nervously. "Since Tilly and I share pain sometimes it would be unfair for _me_ to suffer."

"I'll fight you, too," Sheptilah pointed at Eggman, "if you don't shut your mouth." The witch snapped her fingers and appeared in her usual clothes with the sarong and leather top. She extended her nails into deadly claws with a glamour to appear menacing.

"You brought this on yourself, hedgehog." She grinned with a mouth full of razor-sharp shark teeth.

"Tch." Shadow scoffed, unimpressed with shallow magic. "Let's go, then. To the training arena.”


	17. Aquarius (Let The Sunshine In)

The training area was a massive room located at the very bottom of the fortress. The heat that emanated from the bright lights illuminating the room was tangibly oppressive.

Overlooking the arena was an observation deck embedded directly into the wall. Eggman, Cabbot and Rouge gathered behind the thick glass; Hope refused to attend.

"These are the rules of engagement." The arena’s loudspeakers crackled as Boris’ weary voice spoke through them. Shadow and Sheptilah, both already down below and waiting for their cue, turned their attention upwards. "You are to limit your use of magic and Chaos Energy so as to avoid inflicting grievous bodily harm upon one another. Additionally, I reserve the right end the fight should I feel it's gone too far. Do you agree?"

"When are they going to realize that I can’t understand them when their voices come through technology?" Tilly bobbed her hair and encased her calf in a purple crystalline substance to prevent her injuries from opening any further.

"He said we're not allowed to kill each other or overuse our powers." Shadow rolled his eyes. "Do you agree to that?"

"Yes."

"We agree." Shadow gave the thumbs-up.

"Here we go." Eggman watched nervously.

"Is this being recorded?" Rouge was looking over the equipment in the observation deck.

"Yes, for liability purposes." Cabbot's forehead glistened with beads of sweat.

"Oh, dear God." Eggman whined. "I'm going to die."

"You've been saying that all week and you haven't died yet," Rouge was texting someone on her phone, "stop making promises you're not keeping."

"I’ll be right one of these days, statistically speaking." Ivo insisted.

Sheptilah and Shadow stared at each other intently. Crimson eyes met amethyst as they waited for their opponent to make the first move.

"Come on, then! Or are you afraid?" Sheptilah smirked at him.

Shadow let out a quiet growl and teleported behind her. He nudged her forward to test the waters and the witch took a few clumsy steps forward to right herself.

  
"Why is he hesitating?" Rouge had her attention split between the battle and the rapid-fire pinging of her phone.

"There's no pride in destroying a handicapped target," Eggman was watching the fight far more intently, "but that's not why he's fighting like that.”

Shadow felt strange; he was so angry just moments ago but now he felt numb. Sheptilah turned around to look at him and tilted her head. There was a subtle difference to her eyes that didn’t escape his notice but he couldn’t quite place what it was.

"So then what is he doing?" Cabbot asked the doctor. "If you know so much."

"Getting a feel for how far she's willing to go at this moment." Eggman said, adjusting his glasses. "Trying to make her angry."

  
“Your cheap glamours are shallow. I know this and you are wasting energy trying to be intimidating with them." Shadow clenched his fists.

Sheptilah brought a long nail up to the corner of her mouth and smirked. "So you think the glamours are fake."

"Everything about you is fake."

She chuckled in response. "Cute. You're cute. Not as cute as Hebat but I can't exactly argue, now can we?” 

Sheptilah rolled her shoulders and cracked her neck before continuing. “My glamours are solid. Temporary transmogrification."

  
He was hyper-aware of her every motion and found it difficult to concentrate. For the briefest of moment, he wondered if he regretted the very fight he instigated. 

  
Shadow was snapped from his thoughts once Sheptilah, in one, sudden motion, flung her head back and then forward, releasing the glamour keeping her hair bobbed and unleashing a wave of silvery tresses.

The hedgehog curled into a spiked ball and spin-dashed forward, slicing through the hair as if it were wet paper.

  
Unfortunately for him, this was playing directly into her hand. Sheptilah quickly whipped her head around and released another set of tendrils, remaining standing in one spot as her hair spread out in all directions.

Shadow nimbly dodged the first few tresses that snatched at him but found himself quickly running out of ground. He teleported above her in an attempt to regain momentum but Shepitlah accounted for this and the hedgehog found himself tangled in her hair like prey in a spider’s web.

"Chaos Spear!" He shouted as he summoned a crackling beam of energy to cut himself free.

Sheptilah extended her nails and turned to slash at him but Shadow, now freed, dodged with minimal effort.

While he was occupied with avoiding her attacks from the front, her hair silently snaked behind him. Grabbing him by the spines, she threw her arm back in a swift ripping motion and forcibly removed multiple needles.

He howled in agony, pain shooting from deep in his back and across his entire body. Sheptilah in turn felt a sympathetic pain through their bond that felt as if someone slid a hot knife between her vertebrae. Small droplets of blood seeped from invisible wounds that lined her back.

Shadow grit his teeth and teleported into the air behind Sheptilah again. He deftly grabs the woman by the wrist and uses the downward momentum of his fall to bring the her down to the ground with him, twisting her arm and fracturing the bone in the process.

Shadow immediately disengaged from the witch, the pain in his back now compounded by his arm screaming in sympathy. It felt as if his arm was being cut through with a rusty saw.

Eggman only felt a slight prickle.

"Do you see?" Sheptilah rolled over to look at him. "Do you see why I did not want to fight like this?"

"We share pain." He voice was low from equal parts pain and exertion.

"Yes, we share the pain we inflict on each other." With her unbroken hand she snapped the tiny bones in her wrist back into place and lifted her hair to show him the injuries she caused him reflected on her own body. The searing pain in his own hand ceased instantly.

"Now, do you still wish to fight? If it is what you want I will comply." She looked at him with determination in her eyes.

“I won't quit until I win." He lunged forward.

"The goal isn't to win;" she barely dodged an oncoming punch, "the goal is to see how far we can go before Cabbot panics." She rolled out of the way, laughing.

**[WhiteEcho]** Shadow drew first blood

**[BlueBlrr91]** how much blood?

**[WhiteEcho]** It's not literal

**[WhiteEcho]** He just broke her wrist

**[WhiteEcho]** It's flopping around

**[BlueBlrr91]** Don't tell me these gross details!

**[BlueBlrr91]** I'm eating!

**[Th!nkP!nk]** Ew

**[WhiteEcho]** She just healed it she's fine

Shadow avoided Sheptilah’s whip-like tresses by teleporting out of harm's way. He curled into a ball and launched himself at her multiple times, his razor-sharp quills grazing her skin on each pass.

She struggled to keep up with his incredible speed and tripped over a clump of her own hair.

**[WhiteEcho]** Eggman is freaking out it's hilarious

**[BlueBlrr91]** I wish I was there to see it

**[BlueBlrr91]** His panic I mean

**[BlueBlrr91]** I do not want to see broken arms

**[WhiteEcho]** I understood ;)

**[Th!nkP!nk]** Sticks doesn't know who she wants to see win

**[Th!nkP!nk]** Knuckles says 'I hope I win'

**[BlueBlrr91]** Gotta love knucks

"I don’t feel any pain but the back of my neck _does_ itch," Eggman scratched it, "I suppose I worried over nothing."

"It's the iron box we're standing in," Cabbot was watching carefully, "it's probably disrupting the bond, yes?"

"Could be…" Eggman reached for his gauntlet to make a note but frowned when he remembered that it was still impounded somewhere.

"Stop holding back," Shadow growled, "show me what you're made of, witch."

"And I'm worried again." The doctor sighed.

Sheptilah complied. "I'm made of equal parts human and magic."

All of her shorn hair pooled into a silvery liquid; what still clung to Shadow seeped deep into his spines and fur, weighing him down significantly.

“How many people have you killed, Shadow?”

“No innocents if that’s what you think. They all tried to kill me first.” He clawed at the goo spreading beneath his fur. The material closely resembled the body of a witch-eater and that deeply unnerved him.

He noticed that the residue coating the walls was beginning to re-congeal and jumped out of the way but was immediately engulfed as it flew at him from all sides. 

The hedgehog instinctively teleported behind the witch and knocked her to the ground with a leg sweep.

  
Sheptilah’s magic dissipated on impact; the pain of a direct kick to her injured leg was too great and shattered her concentration, returning her hair to its typical absurd length as the crystal protecting her leg crumbled into dust.

"I expected this," Shadow stood over her with a frown on his face, "And yet I still expected _more_.”

"It's my leg," Sheptilah sat up and looked over the blood-soaked bandages, "pain is distracting."

"I told you I would wait until you were healed."

"I am not one to accept pity," she huffed, "besides, you can heal me."

"How?" Shadow furrowed his brow. Though he felt a twinge of guilt it was outweighed by skepticism.

"Just my leg but healed and then touch it. And don’t worry, you won't hurt me."

"I remember Rouge telling me how you were hurt after holding that Chaos Emerald. My powers are all based in the manipulation of Chaos Energy and I don’t think this is a wise idea-"

"What's happening?" Shadow was cut off by Cabbot speaking over PA system.

Sheptilah waved to the window and beckoned them down. Boris simply shook his head and motioned for them to come up instead.

"We'll continue this later." Shadow grabbed her wrist, the same one that he broke moments ago, and teleported up to the observation deck.

"I am not going to lie, I‘m a little disappointed that it ended like this." Eggman's mustache drooped.

"If it makes you feel better I made Sonic freak out over nothing." Rouge looked at the text messages from the frantic blue hedgehog who was certain Shadow would accidentally kill the witch and bring a slow but assured end to all life on Mobius as a result.

"That does make me feel better!" The doctor perked up. "Tell me, did he cry? Panic? Wheeze? Ooh, _tell me_ , Rouge! I'm all tingly with excitement."

"I ruined his lunch." The bat shrugged.

"I'll take it!" Eggman wiggled with joy.

"Why were you texting Sonic?" Shadow raised an eyebrow.

"I was also texting Amy." Rouge turned away and smirked. “They wanted to know who would win."

Sheptilah, dizzy from the teleportation, swayed uneasily on her feet. "Shadow definitely won this one."

They could see chunks of her hair was missing from the fight and from her time in the ziggurat using the tresses like breadcrumbs.

"So that _is_ your natural hair length," Rouge chuckled, "or _was_."

"It will grow back. Hair always grows back," Sheptilah looked at Eggman's bald head, "for most of us."

She reached down to Shadow and gently stroked his spines, healing the ones she pulled out with an icy rush.

"Don't do that again." He scolded her. She wasn't sure if he meant pulling out the spines or touching him. It was likely both.

Sheptilah's wounds were redressed and she was given a clean GUN tracksuit to wear around. Eggman was given back his old clothes and gauntlet which Sheptilah had absorbed the blood off of so they were clean.

She relaxed in one of the common rooms draped across a sofa and eating freshly made fries while Eggman talked to his robots.

He sat near her but not within arm's reach.

Shadow himself was sitting on the floor with a hot dog in one hand and a pen in the other. He was going through the massive grimoire and writing down what he felt were important notes.

"Wait- where's Cubot?" He peered into the screen of his gauntlet. "Is that Dave?!"

"David popped in to bring you a Hanukkah gift." Orbot held up a small blue box. "First of eight, he threatens."

"Is that Eggman? Doctor Eggman!" Dave the intern waved to the camera. As a light blue river rat Mobian with buck teeth and braces he didn't appear very intimidating.

"What? That started today?" Being busy not dying all week was throwing off his internal clock.

"Actually my calendar says it starts tomorrow but I have to work a double shift so I thought I'd drop in and see how you were doing… and if you still needed an intern." Dave was sucking up because he didn't want to be forced to work holidays.

Sheptilah scooched over to Eggman and looked at the screen. "Who is the pretty blue kid and why is he in your house?"

"That is David… somebody who used to work for me and he was just leaving, right?" Eggman finished that sentence with a sing-song voice.

"Who is this?" The Mobian leaned a little too hard on Orbot and nearly caused the robot to fall over. Orbot pushed him away with prejudice.

"She's nobody- thank you for the gift but please leave my lair at once. I will be returning to it soon.”

He closed his gauntlet and sighed. "Why do I even have high tech security if a teenage rat could just _walk_ in?"

"Hanukkah, huh?" Sheptilah paused while her stone translated. "Oh, you're Hebrew! Oh, that's still a thing! Nice. You guys were kind of new back in my day."

"We _endured_ ," he was only ethnically related to it, not religiously, "it's not the _only_ culture that's been around as long, either."

"It's nice to know that there are some things have not changed all that much; but I really love these," she held up a fry, "what are these again?"

"French fries," Eggman gestured by making a chopping motion, "potato that's cut up and fried."

"So have you thought about what you want? Don't go crazy. I'm not a Djinn so I _can_ say no to you." She poked him in the arm with a fry.

"What? Oh, for waking you up?"

"Well yes but also for holding my leg together, remember?" She stuck her injured leg out for emphasis. "What do you want?"

"World domination!"

"No."

"It was worth a try." What _did_ he want?

"Maybe it'll be easier if I just suggest things and you pick from that. Um, gold?"

"I'm already filthy rich; I have enough gold."

"A wife?"

"Are _you_ offering?" He paused. "Wait, wouldn't that make me a king?"

"A king of nothing, really. Oh; and a haunted house. No, I'm not offering myself!" She stuck out her tongue playfully. "I could summon a succubus, I don’t need you." She joked.

"What's… what's a succubus?" Shadow turned his head back to look at Tilly.

She stared at the hedgehog for a moment before her face turned bright red. She couldn't gauge how old Shadow was because Mobians didn't age the same way humans or Overlanders did.

"Never mind." She finally said.

"Whatever," Shadow turned back to his work. A lot of the pages were diary entries from past royalty and a lot of them gushed about their familiars and had their hand prints in the margins.

"I wonder why you can't touch the Chaos Emeralds." He was looking for entries about them but none seemed to exist.

Sheptilah laid back down with her head by Eggman's thigh and flexed her foot on the uninjured leg. "I do not know. What are you looking for?"

"Information about the Emeralds and what familiars do." Shadow's ears flicked.

"We should start working on the weapon after you heal my leg." She looked up at Eggman and could almost see under his glasses. He looked down at her and she swore his sclerae were black. She quickly looked away with a mix of embarrassment and horror.

"Wait," he saw something and flipped back to it. "Aliens… alien parasites…" He paused. "You're not a human at _all_."

"Eh? I most certainly am."

"This entry states that your people are descended from aliens." The hedgehog tapped the page with his finger.

"No, that's not what it means. You're looking at it literally." Sheptilah sat up and wove images out of smoke. Tall beings with severely elongated arms and gray bodies stood among primitive humans.

"Only about two or three thousand years before I was born did they come. They were the last two of their kind." The figures had no discernible faces and instead communicated with smoke imagery in the same way Sheptilah was doing.

"They were unable to reproduce on their own - and even if they could they would be severely inbred. They were the last two of their species and they told us they came from beyond the stars we couldn't even see from Mobius. Our moon was like theirs- granting them the ability to recharge their power from the diluted sunlight.

"We didn't know the witch-eaters were parasites and they infected the aliens like a disease. They wanted to live out the rest of their lifespan peacefully but instead brought the deadly creatures with them unknowingly and unleashed it on our planet."

The alien figures were hunched over and their bodies heaved as if they were coughing.

"We cared for them and taught them our alchemy and they taught us about their magic. In return for our love and kindness they bestowed upon the original two witches Oracle Stones when they died. One was a human man, the other a Mobian man. All of my people were descended from the two. Every child born to a Nannae witch is granted a stone of their own, regardless of the sex of the parent. At least one of them has to be Nannaeic.

"There were twelve houses because each of the men had six children. We named our zodiac after them. Each season has six houses divided among the days:

The dry season Aries, Taurus, Gemini, Cancer, Leo and Virgo. The wet season has Libra, Scorpio, Sagittarius, Capricorn, Aquarius and Pisces."

"So the zodiac hasn't really changed in all that time?" Eggman wondered just how old the concept was. "My birthday is June twenty-third, so I am a Cancer." He mimicked a crab clinching its pincers with his hands.

"Huh. Lots of things seem to endure, then." She smiled, "I am Sheptilah of the house of Aquarius. My patron symbol is an armadillo holding water."

Shadow smirked. "I am on the cusp of Cancer but I fall under Gemini. My records stated I was 'born' June nineteenth."

"I can do a proper star sign reading on you two later because it's a lot more complicated than just the days you were born. Gemini had a human patron holding twins, but they were not identical twins. Cancer is a desert jackal Mobian with crab claws; I think that Mobian was a hybrid. Anyway - that's what it is. I am not an alien; just part alien."

"So your gift is also your burden," Shadow nodded, "and now it's my burden, too."

"Yes, but it's a wonderful burden. We were like gods among men. We could live for hundreds of years if we wanted to. We dedicated our lives and powers to making things better for all life. We were worshiped and revered! Now I'm all that's left and my own home tried to kill me." Sheptilah frowned and the magical vapor disappeared.

"I'm starting to understand why I'm your familiar. I am also part alien." Shadow's ears swiveled back slightly, "but I will discuss that later."

"But-"

"It's a _long_ story, Sheptilah." Eggman patted her shoulder. "Don't bother him about it."

"I'm sorry for calling you a demon earlier, Shadow. Things have been messy with me lately, haven't they?" She felt his own emotional turmoil. It was as if someone was twisting a knife in her heart.

"You aren't the first and likely won't be the last to do so." He carefully turned a page and then realized he left his book back in the hospital room. It was probably lost forever. _Well,_ he thought, _this one is just as mangled on the inside as House Of Leaves. Not much difference._

Sheptilah turned back to Eggman and tilted her head.

"What?" He leaned away from her.

"I think I know what I can do for you."

"Oh, God."

"Any living creature can learn and perform magic. I will teach you something small. Perhaps magical chemistry?"

"I have no use for magic," he straightened up, "I have science and _real_ chemistry!"

Sheptilah pouted, "I think you'd really like learning it, though. You could do wonderful things with science and magic."

"Like what?" Eggman furrowed his eyebrows.

" _Alchemy_." Shadow turned his head to them. "She's proposing to teach you alchemy. Aren't you?"

"And that's why he's my familiar!" She smiled with pride.

"This isn't going to end well for anyone." Eggman's mustache drooped. "Last time I used magic things ended poorly." He was thinking about the Chronophage and the Naugus twins.

_You shouldn't be teaching this terrorist anything_ , Shadow thought to himself.

"Alchemy is as much mathematics and logic as it is magic. Once you learn how to wrap your brain around it you will be able to do wonderful things- like give your robots life." She sat up and cutely brushed her hair behind her ear so as to appear innocent.

Life? In his robots? The whole point of them being robots is their artificiality. However... if Metal Sonic was alive… that would change things _drastically._ A devious grin spread across the doctor's face.

"In that case I would love to be your student," he offered his hand to be shaken in agreement.

Sheptilah's eyes glinted mischievously and and shook Eggman's massive hand with both of hers.

Eggman suddenly felt like he made a deal with the devil and was already regretting it.


	18. Invisible Touch

Shadow's handwriting had a blocky look to it. It is an angular, sharp way of writing and although the penmanship was extremely well-practiced it was obvious he never curved the pen much. His notes filled up every square inch of the the notebook pages in tiny print.

He learned to write this way when sneaking notes to Maria and Gerald on the ARK on tiny gum wrappers.

NOTES:

Baneful herb = ? poisonous - fairies are not to be trusted, often steal children - get a grimoire - moon phases are important / red moon = blood moon? Ask about red energy - Oracle Stones are alive? - witch-eaters are known as 'LIBBU MARUS' - succubus = female? sex demon / incubi = male? sex demon / aka SPIRIT WIFE/HUSBAND/SPOUSE / Hahanu = sex demon of indeterminate? gender - Sheptilah means 'banana' - they do not celebrate birthdays but have one big party at the end of the year - iron is deadly - silver is a preferred metal for all purposes but athames- SCRYING: divination through a reflective surface - JOKE that is older than time apparently: what hangs by a man's thigh and pokes many dark holes? A key - energy comes from diluted sunlight from the moon's reflection / harvest moons have 'adverse' effect on witches? ^ Red moon ? / performing their magic without an OS is difficult - it is possible to borrow energy from a witch - witches can use power rings - familiars have arguably more power than the witches that serve them - they learned all kinds of magic from travelers and invited them to write it in the royal grimoire- witches get drunk on poisonous liquids in moderate doses - WITCH HUMANS CAN HAVE CHILDREN WITH MOBIANS?

"This cannot be right," Shadow was very confused. Maybe he was reading the diary entry wrong?

**[Midwife notes: If both are from a race that gives birth to live offspring then it is possible for them to have children together as facilitated by the Oracle Stones.**

**A male human and a female clever folk will always produce a clever folk child but a female human and a male clever folk has a one out of two chance of giving birth to a human or a clever folk. Size difference permitting. This act is taboo and while not forbidden it is frowned upon. It is much more acceptable to adopt a child. The offspring often have mixed magic and are considered 'changelings'. This magic is unstable at best.]**

No. It was _very_ clear.

"Creepy..." He muttered to himself. The very concept of giving birth to something that wasn't even your species twisted his stomach. Maybe it was because he himself was a hybrid; however his birth was from a tube.

"What needs clarification?" Sheptilah peered over Shadow's shoulder.

He closed the grimoire and his notes abruptly. "Never mind; I misread something."

Boris walked into the room and beckoned for Sheptilah to follow him. The witch turned to Eggman and put him to sleep in the same way she did back at the lair by pressing her thumb to his forehead.

"I can't trust him to behave without us here." She smiled innocently. Sheptilah stowed the royal grimoire away and turned to Shadow who kept a tight grip on his notes. The witch's leg had already almost completely healed itself so she walked with only a slight limp.

"You should come with me," she then turned to Cabbot, "is that alright?"

He paused for a moment and then nodded.

"I must ask you for complete silence on the matter." He spoke to both of them.

"Of course." Shadow nodded curtly.

Boris led them quite a distance to the dorm in which he lived. It was like a luxury apartment compared to the simple rooms many of the other soldiers had and the path to get there seemed intentionally confusing.

"Why would you want to teach Doctor Eggman anything?" Shadow finally asked.

"Sonic the hedgehog asked a favor of me, though it was in jest. He requested I _fix_ the doctor." Sheptilah smirked.

"So how does teaching him alchemy change anything about him?" Cabbot furrowed his brows. He would have to tell her that she wouldn't be able to do much with Eggman once they were unbonded because he would be immediately arrested by GUN forces and likely executed.

"As above, so below." The witch flexed her fingers at her side like she was playing an invisible piano until the joints cracked. "Alchemy is about _change_. Changing your way of thinking, changing how you understand the world around you and changing one thing into another."

"Well, yes, we as modern scientists understand that alchemy is mostly nonsense. There is no such thing as turning lead into gold and creating a universal solvent and-"

"You break my heart, Boris!" Sheptilah frowned, drawing the back of her hand over her forehead dramatically. "It's what my people did before we got our Oracle Stones. Maybe your modern idea of alchemy is warped. Magic comes from somewhere and goes _elsewhere_ ; alchemy is the study of what that means. Sure, we had lofty ideas when it was a new concept but it set the foundation for everything else."

"And you think this is going to inspire him to be a better person? That's foolish." Shadow raised an eyebrow.

"Well, if that fails I can always behead him." She shrugged.

"An even six." Shadow replied.

\------------------------------------ ☽ ☾ ----------------------------------

Cabbot's wife, Andrea, sat on a black leather sofa with a newspaper and pen in hand. Her skin had a yellowish pallor to it. Her hair was white and cut short and her body was thin and frail as if her skin was draped over her bones. She was wearing three pairs of fuzzy socks and a thick housecoat to keep warm.

"What is a five letter word for a magical woman?" She was working on a crossword puzzle. "'Mage' only has four letters… the word is on the tip of my tongue..."

"'Witch';" Shadow answered, "hello, Mrs. Cabbot."

"Oh, Shadow! What brings you here?" She turned to him and smiled warmly and then to the tall woman beside him, "Oh, this must be...Sheptilah?"

"Yes." The witch bowed slightly.

"I'm told you're a panacea," Andrea folded the paper and stuffed it between the seat cushions, "and that you can heal anything."

"A panacea?" Sheptilah blushed and stuttered. "I-I'm no such miracle; I can only heal physical injuries and illnesses. What has Mr. Cabbot told you?"

"Oh, he mentioned you had way too much hair for any adult woman and you healed people instantly."

Sheptilah could see the woman's teeth were stained a little gray with age.

"I really do have too much hair," the witch ran her fingers through it, "But it's how I heal. I am absorbing your illness and pain into it because hair has no feeling. All the pain and injury must go somewhere so it goes into me while you are healed." This was only true for cuts and bruises. She lied so they wouldn't panic with what was about to happen as it is _incredibly_ painful for the witch.

"Why are you wasting your energy on an old woman like me?" Andrea adjusted her housecoat, "aren't there younger people who need your help more?"

"Well, I am in the room with _you._ " Tilly straightened up her posture. "I'm going to help you if you will let me."

"What do I have to do?" The old woman eyed the witch curiously.

"Just sit there." Tilly sat next to her and wrapped her hair around the woman's frighteningly small torso.

"It will feel cold." Sheptilah steadied herself and took a deep breath. Healing internal illnesses took a lot more finesse than simply patching together a wound. First, she had to think about the sick organs and where they were located in the body. Then she had to replace theirs with _hers_ , heal the sick organ from within her own body and then return it to its proper host.

The whole process takes about a minute but is extraordinarily difficult.

Boris went over to his wife and sat next to her, holding her hands tightly. His heart beat so hard the pulse was visible in his throat from across the room.

Andrea felt ice form in every vein in her body. It was like she fell through snow into freezing water. Sheptilah's face was pinched with pain and exertion while the exchange occurred between their bodies. It was over so quickly that Sheptilah didn't realize she was sweating profusely. Her hair was damp and stuck to her face.

"Wait…" Andrea felt her torso. "Is... is that it?"

"Yes." Tilly wiped her brow with the back of her hand.

"What do we do now?" Boris stood and got Sheptilah a hand towel which she graciously took.

"Go see your doctor," she dabbed her face dry, "make sure everything is where it belongs."

"Are you okay?" Shadow eyed the witch. "You look unwell."

"I'll be fine…" She was a bit nauseous but was otherwise alright. "I want to get back to the island now." She stood up and took a deep, calming breath.

Boris immediately showered his wife in kisses and hugged her gently.

"Thank you, Sheptilah." Andrea managed to speak after pulling her face away from Boris'.

The witch nodded politely. "If anyone asks I healed you of my own volition; because I did."

Shadow tapped the witch on her elbow. "I'll take you to the mess hall. You must be hungry."

He led her to the hallway so Boris and Andrea could have time to themselves. The clicking of Shadow's metal skates and the quiet whirring of machinery within the thick walls was the only sound as the hall was deserted.

"Shadow," the witch pursed her lips, "why would the Chaos Emerald hurt me? Does it not like me?"

"The gems aren't _sentient_ if that's what you're asking," he brushed his spines with his fingers, "however the witch-eaters are extremely vulnerable to Chaos energy. Maybe you are, too."

"And you use Chaos energy."

"Yes."

"And you are my familiar."

"Yes, Sheptilah."

"So you could kill me simply by touching me if you wished."

"I could do that regardless."

"Don't challenge me to any more fights." She chuckled nervously.

\-------------------------------------- ✫ -------------------------------------

The mess hall was a large open area with vending machines, soda fountains and boxes of ready to eat rations lying about large tables with benches. Some agents milled about talking quietly amongst themselves and Shadow pointed to a familiar white and pink figure standing across the room and tapping her foot in thought. Rouge was at one of the refrigerated machines picking out a salad. She couldn't decide between the chicken or garden varieties.

"Rouge!" Sheptilah walked up to her. "Are you feeling okay?"

The bat turned around and smiled, "Oh yes," she decided on the chicken salad since the garden salad had apple slices in it. She opened the door and selected her meal which came prepackaged with a plastic fork. Rouge then picked out a small carton of orange juice and invited them to sit with her after they picked out their food.

Shadow wasn't hungry so he simply watched Sheptilah grab a garden salad, bottled water and followed Rouge to a table.

The witch sat down next to Shadow and poked at the plastic wrapper on her food. “What is this weird material? It’s clear like glass but it’s springy like some kind of _film._ ”

"Plastic." Rouge opened it for her. "Cool, isn't it?"

Small talk. A lot of small talk between the three of them and all of them avoided discussing the ziggurat. Rouge was anxious to find out how Mrs. Cabbot was doing but was more than smart enough to know not to ask in public.

Sheptilah didn't realize how hungry she was until she took her first crunchy bite of apple.

The bat concentrated on scrolling through her phone to distract herself from remembering how it felt to vomit up all those maggots.

"We will have to get you one of these so we can remain in contact." Rouge had at least sixty emails from spam bots.

"But I can't understand your talking over technology. Wouldn't it be pointless?"

"Shadow and I can teach you sign language until you learn our spoken one." She held up the back of her hand to her face, curved her finger like a hook and 'dragged' it downward. "American sign language for 'witch'."

"Oh, video chatting," Shadow narrowed his eyes, "another way to try and trick me into getting a phone."

Sheptilah smiled. "Wait, show me the sign for 'bat'."

Rouge crossed her hands at the wrists over her chest and with her index fingers pointing toward her shoulders and flapped once. "Bat."

Shadow held up a fist with one hand and brought up his other hand behind it with his thumb tucked in and fingers sticking up in a single wave motion. "Hedgehog."

"We had something similar but it was definitely not the same signs," she took a sip of water, "why do you know any at all?"

"Well, we have deaf and hard-of-hearing colleagues but it's also important to be able to communicate silently on more covert missions." Shadow was lying a little; Maria had taught him in case her hearing failed her before she died.

"We also need to get you some legal papers. Stuff like a photo ID and birth certificate." Rouge tapped her phone on her chin. "That's a lot to do."

"Do whatever it is you need to do." Sheptilah suddenly stiffened up.

"What?" Rouge peered at her.

That was when Abraham Tower approached the trio.

\-------------------------------------- ☀ -------------------------------------

"Doctor Eggman?" The red fox walked into the room to find the Overlander passed out on the sofa. "Hello?" The fox paused for a moment thinking Eggman had died but was oddly relieved when he saw that his mustache twitched.

His gauntlet was blinking. He had urgent messages from the Egg Army and the bots back at his lair.

"Doctor Eggman-" The fox nudged him.

"Go away, Clove," Eggman rolled over, "I'm napping…"

"Clove? My name is Apollo." The fox's ears twitched when he heard the door slide open.

Eggman's gauntlet shocked him awake. That meant it was a very serious message.

"I'm up, I'm up!" He jumped and looked at his arm, "Where's the fire?"

An image came on screen showing Thunderbolt with some exhausted robots around her. "This base is unsalvageable and I request a transfer." She was alone with only robots helping her as the other Soumercian Egg army soldiers were still at GUN under lock down.

" _What?_ "

"We cannot salvage it."

"Why not!?"

Apollo instinctively reached for his gun when Eggman raised his voice.

"We think more of those witch-eaters came back after we left. We should quarantine what's left with a shield and start over somewhere else."

The door slid open and Sheptilah was with the two Mobians beside her and president Tower behind them. The witch appeared to be very upset and angry.

"Fine," he lowered his voice, "meet me back at the lair." He hung up before Thunderbolt could deafen them with her squeal of delight.

"Doctor Eggman," Abraham peered at him unflinchingly, "we cannot allow you to be separated."

"Come again?" He narrowed his eyes and stood.

"I cannot allow you to become separated from the witch." He repeated coolly. "We are also holding your Egg army militia as collateral. We want to ensure that we have your full cooperation in defeating these witch-eaters and will not undermine us at every turn."

"We have to stay joined," the witch emphasized, "it was that or they arrest you indefinitely and we lose unfettered access to your resources."

"Unacceptable!" Eggman stomped his foot, " _you_ don't want this, either." He pointed at the woman.

"I had to convince GUN not to just 'acquire' all of your property and arrest all of your people right this second." Sheptilah crossed her arms, "we cannot trust you or your militia to not back-stab us so I have to stay joined to you to make sure you behave."

"Team Dark will check in on you periodically; but for now you are instructed to stay on Seaside Island. Rouge will escort you both home." Tower let a small smirk creep up the corner of his mouth.

"So does this mean you've joined GUN, Sheptilah?"

"No. Absolutely not. It means you are my puppet and you will do as I ask until the alien threat is neutralized. After that I will see to it that GUN shows mercy on you for your crimes against the planet and its people." Sheptilah lowered her gaze to the floor, "we must return to the island now."

"Bow to the new ruler of the Eggman Empire," Rouge smiled devilishly.

Eggman was silent. Terrifyingly silent. The devious little cogs and wheels were already turning in his mind.


End file.
